


a bar in the mojave desert

by arostine



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol, Demon Shane Madej, M/M, Magical Tattoos, POV Alternating, Shane Madej Has a Big Dick, Size Kink, Witch!Ryan, Witch!Sara, having sex with demons who want to eat your soul is unwise, hints of possible future shyanara, the sex is fully consensual and everyone's aware of the associated risks-to-soul, though it feels prudent to emphasize:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arostine/pseuds/arostine
Summary: Shane first heard about Ryan’s magical little bar in the southern California desert years ago. He’d always meant to visit, but the bar is off the beaten path, hidden specifically to make it difficult for people like him to find. So Shane is trulysoexcited to finally be here, in this enchanting little bar that’s turned so many of his kind away. He'ssoexcited to finally set foot in the spot where Ryan’s fought off one attempt on his life after another, where Ryan’s won the undying loyalty of his handpicked bar staff.But Shane ismostexcited to finally meet Ryan.He wants to drink with him.He wants to play a game.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 168
Kudos: 704
Collections: Shyan Valentine's Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/gifts).



> This started as a Shyan Valentines Exchange fic for Impala_Chick who requested Ryan leading a team, and included in her tropes/kinks preference list that she enjoys demon!Shane, and ‘oh no he’s hot’. I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT BECAUSE GOSH, THOSE THINGS ARE SURE IN HERE BUT THIS FIC GOT SOMEWHAT OUT OF HAND. 
> 
> Indeed, I blame [yesi/loveontherocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveontherocks/pseuds/loveontherocks) entirely for this fic spiraling completely out of my control, because after she gifted me [this phenomenal, heavily inspirational Witch!Ryan AU ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727125), to add insult to injury, she linked me Ryan's bar-pool [instagram story](https://arostinebfu.tumblr.com/post/190918266555/lun-ti-an-supportive-boyfriend) and prompted _: ryan owns a bar and shane stays after closing. its three in the morning and theyre playing pool against each other. shanes like ‘if i win, you pay my tab.’ and ryans like ‘what about if i win.’ and shane is like ‘im sure we can figure something out.’ and they fuck on a pool table_.
> 
> And I was like, great prompt but needs more allusions to the inherent eroticism of The Devil Went Down to Georgia, egregious misuse of Sumerian mythology and _The Lesser Key of Solomon_ , and misguided attempts at magical realism. Because rpf about youtube personalities seemed like the appropriate avenue for that, I guess. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading my very strange first offering to the BFU fandom.

Start in Los Angeles and drive east—drive out past the movie studios, battle through the constant traffic gridlock on the 101 and across the river, wind across the tangled threads of the interchange out of the city, and keep going, going, east then north—up through the Angeles national forest. Drive up that forest at the right time after a wildfire and it’ll be covered in the most beautiful lavender flowers you’ve ever seen, a kind of forget-me-not that thrives in the chaparral and yellow pine forest. Some people say they smell like mint, others call them sickly-sweet or even rancid, but what everyone agrees on – they’ll only let you touch them once. A second touch, and you’ll be sorry. 

Keep driving. Pass San Bernardino, pass Barstow. You’re getting closer to the Mojave desert now. The lakes out here used to be the last water you could find for a hundred miles. That’s why the gold rush miners built their cities here, though not until after they’d pushed out the Paiute tribes that were here first.

Outside Barstow, I-15 will hit I-40, and I-40’s the road you want to take. Sixty, seventy years ago, you could’ve taken the famous Route 66, paused your trek through the Mojave at a mom-n-pop café that ran moonshine through the basement during Prohibition, at a concrete teepee selling fake “Indian artifacts” at a dime a dreamcatcher, rested for the night under the buzzing neon glow of a space age motel sign. Not anymore, though. They paved over Route 66 years ago—all that’s left of that space age motel is a dilapidated sign, and the roadside attractions have crumbled into dust. The death of the Mother Road has left behind ghost towns, 20th century counterparts of the gold rush towns that died a century before. 

It’s dry enough, out here in the Mojave; things don’t really rot the way they do back in LA. If you know where to look, it’s easy to find the dusty skeletons of the past. They’re not so much hidden as they are tucked out of the way. Forgotten. 

There’s an exit off I-40 that’s a little like those ghost towns. Tucked out of the way. Tucked into the corner of your vision. 

The directions get a little fuzzy from here. It’s exactly 161 miles from Barstow, California to the Arizona border. Almost a three hour drive if you’re going 60, but you can probably go faster. No one’s watching. And you won’t need to go that far. You’ll be there before you know it.

Drive east. Watch the road, but not too closely. Focus on the sand and gravel of the desert, and keep an eye out for Joshua trees. 

That’ll be your exit. 

There’s a bar here, not far from the exit. It’s not very impressive looking—squat and square, dusty white aluminum siding on the outside, with fluorescent signs in the windows advertising Budweiser and Corona. There’s no towns nearby, no other businesses, no obvious reason to draw you in to a place like this—no obvious reason for a place like this to exist, really. But the sign in the window is flipped to “OPEN” and, like a relic of the past, there’s a flashing neon sign on top of the roof that reads _“Ryan’s Bar”_. 

You made it.

****

*****

Sara’s the one who sees the tall man come in first. 

She’s the only one behind the bar right now, grinding mint leaves in her mortar and pestle to make a mojito. There’s only one customer here right now – the bleach-blonde lady who ordered the mojito, Sara doesn’t recall her name – and so far it’s a slow night. Slow, but with a weird energy in the air, a pressure-change like a thunderstorm is rolling in, even though it almost never rains out here. It feels like something’s about to happen. In her three years working for Ryan, Sara’s learned to trust her intuition about that kind of thing. 

So she’s not putting her full attention into mixing this lady’s drink, and the mint’s getting muddled within an inch of its life as her eyes keep sliding towards the door. 

“You can stop now,” the lady says, voice obviously annoyed, tapping bright red acrylic nails on the bar counter. “You’re going to make it too bitter.” 

Sara stops, but she doesn’t apologize. It’s this lady’s third visit, and Ryan’s made no secret of the fact he doesn’t like her. She won’t be back. 

Still, a job’s a job, so she finishes making the lady’s mojito and slides it across the bar to her. The lady doesn’t thank her, just glares jealously at the tiny star-shaped tattoos at the outer corners of Sara’s eyes. 

_Yeah, you wish_ , Sara thinks. _I earned these._

The lady looks away, almost like she heard her. 

She’s pretty, Sara realizes, would be even prettier if she weren’t quite so aggressively bleached and botoxed, quite so caked in foundation and trying to look ten years younger than she actually is. The lady starts fiddling with the button on the collar of her fancy silk blouse, undoing one, then another, and Sara hopes this isn’t about to get weird. 

“Where’s Ryan?” the lady asks. “I’ve got something I want to show him.” She scoots forward a little on the bar stool, pulls her blouse down a little in front. Sara resists the urge to role her eyes. 

“Ryan’s in back with his dogs,” Sara says, and doesn’t add, _and he isn’t interested in your designer clothes **or** your cleavage. _ “He doesn’t want to be bothered.” 

The lady’s eyes narrow dangerously as she sips her drink, and maybe Sara should be on the safe side, just in case. There’s an athame under the counter, and Sara puts her hand on the hilt. 

“Well, I’m asking you to bother him for this, girl.” 

_Girl_. Fuck _off_. 

Sara recognizes her type; Ryan had her pegged from the very start. It’s not infrequent that people seek out Ryan’s bar for the wrong reasons – beauty, power, wealth – Ryan sniffs them out well enough, makes sure they don’t come back. Some of them aren’t happy about it, though. Some of them make a scene on the way out. 

The lady’s fidgeting with her neck line again, and Sara risks a look a little bit closer, and oh—she’s _not_ trying to show off her cleavage; she’s fiddling with a necklace. A silver chain set with a smooth crystal pendant. The crystal is black and glossy, cut in an elongated hexagonal taper. It’s elegant-looking, Sara has to admit. 

The lady pulls it out all the way, hooks her thumb under the chain to show it off. 

“You like it?” the lady asks. “I think Ryan will like it.” 

“Pretty,” Sara says, because sometimes complementing her type is helpful, drawing the conversation out, making it all about her. “What kind of stone is it?” 

“Black tourmaline,” the lady says, and her red nails are clicking on the bar again. 

And _oh_ , that is _insulting_. A newbie on her third visit implying Ryan needs a protection crystal. Implying that Ryan can’t protect his house. 

The lady smiles, cruelly, like she’s just read Sara’s thoughts. 

“Ryan needs to draw his shutters down,” she says. “The neighbors are looking in.” 

“I wouldn’t presume to know what Ryan needs, if I were you.” Sara’s hand tightens around the hilt of the athame, and she hopes this woman hears the threat in her voice. 

Still. _Neighbors._

That’s when the bell on the door chimes, and the tall man walks in. 

****

*

Ryan’s sprawled out on the couch in the back room, Netflix on in the background, taking what Sara insisted is a well-deserved break to play with his dachshunds. 

Well, far be it from him not to be receptive to his employees’ suggestions. 

_“Who’s a good girl,”_ he says, as Dori bounces up on his knees for another treat. She rolls over for belly-rubs and his heart melts a little. _“Who’s the best familiar in the world? You are!”_ He silently apologizes to Micki, his other dachshund, currently napping in the corner, who is, of course, tied for best. 

Then the front door to the bar chimes, and Ryan groans like he’s been stabbed. 

Dori looks up at him, concerned, protective, with an inquisitive little bark. He kisses her right on top of her cute little noggin, scratching behind her ears to reassure her. It isn’t the end of the world. But it is _extremely_ annoying.

If there’s somebody else in the bar, he’s going to have to greet them. If he goes out into the front room, he’s going to have to acknowledge the presence of Inanna, the worst newbie to roll through in at least a year. And in the off-chance the bell’s rung because that newbie’s decided to leave before closing—well, that’s the end of her third visit. Ryan’s got to make sure she doesn’t come back. 

_“Let me handle her,”_ Sara said, when they saw the red Mercedes pull up in their parking lot. _“She’ll ignore me, and I’ll run out the clock ‘til closing. She’ll just pester you.”_

Ryan went for it, only because his first two visits with this woman had probably taken years off his life. She called herself _Inanna_ , for fuck’s sake, how pretentious. She was aggressive and demanding, and asked questions he wouldn’t answer if they came from the most trusted members of his staff – though, any patrons who he trusted enough to promote to staff-members would know well enough not to ask. And most annoyingly of all, Inanna kept _hitting on him_ , even after he’d been quite clear on the fact that she was very much not his type. 

With another groan and a goodbye pat to Dori’s head, Ryan pushes off his couch and heads toward the front room. 

God he hopes it’s not another newbie. Another newbie to deal with, on top of finally kicking Inanna out, that’d be all he needs today. Hopefully it’s a regular coming in, or Curly arriving early for his shift—he’s done that a couple of times, an eager new-hire that Ryan just promoted. Ryan could deal with that. 

He opens the door of the back room, stares back into the main bar, and is immediately glad the shadows of the radiator mostly conceal the doorway to his private space. 

Because of course, it’s not a regular walking into his bar. It’s not Curly. 

Standing in the doorway, backlit by the neon glow of the sign on his roof, is a tall man Ryan’s never seen before. 

The man is smiling. 

The man looks around the bar, like he’s trying to take it all in, eyes flitting over the liquor bottles on the back shelves, the neon beer signs in the windows. His gaze lingers for a moment on the pool table in the center of the room, and then he moves on to Inanna. 

Ryan watches, still, silent, as the man’s eyes slide over Inanna, slide and then catch, and he stares her down. He’s still smiling, but he looks at Inanna like he’s sizing her up, like he’s judging her in some way, weighing her and finding her wanting. The air in the bar is changing, charging, like static electricity. Like lightning. 

Ryan feels his breath catch. 

Sara, who’s not stupid, is sinking backwards into the shadows before she’s noticed. She meets Ryan’s eyes, and he nods, and the inside lights of the bar go out; the shadows darken further. In silence, Sara brushes past his shoulder, back behind him, through the door he left open into the back room. He hears the lock click shut behind her. Smart girl. He hopes she thinks to call Curly, to tell him not to come in.

He doesn’t think any more customers are going to find themselves stumbling off I-40 and into his bar on this particular evening. 

The tall man and Inanna are still just…staring at each other. Neither moved at all when Sara killed the lights, even though now the bar’s only lit by the neon beer signs in the windows, casting weirdly-colored shadows across Inanna’s bleach-blonde hair, across the tall man’s pale face, as the colored light refracts off the liquor bottles around them. 

Ryan can’t see Inanna’s face from here; he’s behind her. Inanna can’t see Ryan at all. He can’t see her, but he feels something reaching out to him, weakly, from her direction. A chill in the air. A cry for help. 

Ryan doesn’t answer. He wants to see how this plays out. 

The tall man’s smile turns cruel.

Ryan watches as Inanna’s head sinks gently down to her chest, slowly down further, then comes to rest, with a tap, directly on the surface of the bar. 

Ryan closes his eyes, centers himself, listens as well as he can to the sounds in the bar around him. After a moment, he registers the slow intake and exhale of Inanna’s breath. 

She’s just unconscious, then. Interesting. 

Well. Now that he and the tall man are the only people left standing in the room, it’s time for Ryan to do something potentially very stupid. But what kind of barman would he be if he didn’t greet his new patron?

Ryan takes a step forward, out of the shadows around the back room. He and the tall man lock eyes. 

“Oh,” Ryan says. 

Oh. Oh _shit._

The first thing that Ryan notices is that the cruel glint in the man’s eyes is gone now, but the smile is still there. He also notices that, in addition to the whole legs-for-days thing, the man also has a sharp jaw with something between a five-o-clock shadow and a full beard that’s doing wonders highlighting his cheekbones in the low-light of the bar. He has fluffy brown hair that seems generally discordant with his whole—let’s call it, generously, “potentially evil”—vibe. He has what Ryan’s mom called sleepy eyes, and Ryan thinks they’re probably brown, but it’s hard to tell in the dark bar. They might be darker.

Ryan is _so fucked_ , and for _so many_ different reasons.

“Hey!” the tall man says cheerfully, like he’s a normal person and not the most beautiful man Ryan’s ever seen in his life, who also happens to have, just possibly, just put a woman into a coma. 

Ryan blinks at him. 

The man just smiles. 

“Do you work here? I think this lady’s had too much to drink.”

****

*****

The tall man first heard about Ryan’s bar from a friend, years ago, when it was still under its previous ownership. It’s an interesting little place. Certainly there’s no other place like it in California, and precious few in the US, outside of New Orleans. Places like Ryan’s used to spring up like weeds off of coach roads in Europe, but those were different times. He’d always meant to visit the bar, even before Ryan owned it, but it is necessarily off the beaten path, and difficult for people like him to find. 

Just another reason that today is an exciting day for him. But not the biggest reason. 

He is _most_ excited to finally meet Ryan. 

He’s taken a special interest in Ryan, really, picking up information here and there over the years. Truthfully, after all he’s heard, he might almost call himself a _fan_. 

Here’s what he’s heard:

  * **Fact 1.** Ryan has been the proprietor of this place for the past seven years which, considering he’s only 29 years old, is an extremely impressive feat. 
  * **Fact 2.** Ryan was the protégé of the former owner, who’d picked him up as a lost little kid in Los Angeles, and apparently taught him everything he knew about running a place like this. 
  * **Fact 3.** Ryan’s mentor got himself very, _very_ killed, along with most of the previous staff of this bar, except for Ryan, who was out in the back feeding his dogs when shit got real. 

(This was the event that first put Ryan on the tall man’s radar. And even seven years of Ryan-research later, he _still_ couldn’t work out whether Ryan himself had anything to do with the massacre. On the one hand, Ryan’s mentor was a borderline-abusive, grade A asshole, and Ryan's certainly proved himself to be ruthlessly competent and ambitious in the intervening years. On the other hand, a kid who has wiener dogs for familiars and watches Paddington on Netflix is hard to peg as the kind of person who’d put out a hit and take out thirteen people in one go, many of whom he’d known since childhood. But hey, he’s been surprised before. Maybe Ryan contains multitudes.) 

  * **Fact 4.** Ryan has stayed alive primarily because he has good friends and solid management skills—he chose the winning strategy of building up a customer base, grinding away for _a year_ as the bar’s only employee, until he worked out which customers he could trust enough to hire. 

(It was a tough year for a lot of people. Lots of coup attempts that Ryan had to fight back, single-handedly. Lots of powerful, promising people getting killed, because they couldn’t realize the _power of cooperation_. Lots of the tall man’s own associates going home _very_ disappointed after trying to sell Ryan more firepower, more protection—useless. Ryan was determined to do it on his own, and he was way too smart to take a deal. Still is, unfortunately.) 

  * **Fact 5.** Once Ryan works out which customers he can trust, he hires those customers onto the bar’s staff, slowly and carefully. Then, and only then, does he start to introduce them to the benefits that working at a place like this can provide. Ryan’s regulars love him. Ryan’s employees are _fanatically_ loyal. Ryan is teaching a master class in running a successful business, except for one thing—
  * **Fact 6.** Ryan doesn’t keep his shutters down, and the neighbors are looking in. 



“What’s your name?” Ryan asks. 

The tall man sits down on a barstool, one over from the sleeping Inanna, and resists the urge to roll his eyes. _Yeah, nice try, Ryan;_ that might work on the _actual_ newbies, but he’s been around the block before, even if he’s never sat down in this particular bar. 

“Pardon?” he asks, mildly, raising an eyebrow. 

“What should I call you, newbie?” Ryan rephrases. It’s a vital rewording, but the way he says it, so utterly _unfazed_ – the kid has balls. “I like to introduce myself to all my patrons. Like this—My name is Ryan. And you?”

The tall man thinks for a moment. Gotta pick something that sounds good, that sounds right. Names have power, even fake ones. He’s not going to go for something insulting to Ryan’s intelligence—Tommy Cruise and Alfred E. Neuman are right out. Ryan almost—but not quite—deserves the truth. 

“Shane,” he says, after a minute of consideration. He tastes the name on his tongue and yes, that feels right. Dangerously close to the mark, really, enough to maybe give Ryan an edge of power over him if he’s smart enough to work out how. 

Shane likes that risk, almost as much as he likes Ryan. 

Ryan grins, teeth sharp and white in the neon light of the dark bar and, _oh_ , Shane likes his smile. Likes his mouth. 

“What can I get you tonight, Shane?” 

“Surprise me,” Shane says. He winks. 

“Ooh, risk-taker,” Ryan says with a laugh. _(And he has such a nice laugh.)_ “Only the finest for a new friend, then. And you—” he points a finger at Shane’s chest, and pauses, considering. “You seem like a whiskey man. Neat?”

“Sure.” 

Ryan turns his back on him to grab the whiskey off the top shelf, and wow, it’s been years since someone with Ryan’s—call it “ professional background”— was either confident or stupid enough to turn their back on Shane. Well, Shane’s been learning about Ryan for seven years now, learning from some of the smartest, scariest people he interacts with. Nothing he’s heard leads him to believe that Ryan’s anywhere close to stupid. Confident, then. From everything Shane’s heard, he has reason to be. 

And he definitely doesn’t mind the view he gets, with Ryan turned away. 

Shane lets himself watch openly as Ryan makes his drink – the flex of Ryan’s back and arms as he lifts the bottle off the shelf, the care with which he pours the whiskey into the tumbler. Ryan has tattoos on the backs of both hands, Shane notices, crescent moons facing away from each other like backwards parentheses. His nails are painted black. 

He passes the whiskey to Shane, and their fingers brush as Shane takes the glass. He feels Ryan shiver, a moment of vulnerability, and Shane wants to _eat him alive._

But not yet. Much more fun to be had in the meanwhile. 

Shane sips his whiskey, and yep, Ryan’s given him the good stuff, and it makes Shane feel like being nice. So does the fact that Ryan’s clearly watching his mouth while he takes a sip, his throat when he swallows. 

“You should close early tonight,” Shane says, low and rough. “You should tell your friend to go home.” 

There’s a pause. 

“Pardon?” Ryan asks, a second later. For the first time, Shane hears an edge of anxiety in his voice. 

Interesting. Did Ryan think that Shane didn’t _notice_ the other woman in the room with Inanna, didn't see her kill the lights and then sneak into the back room? Honestly, he thought it was cute when she locked the door, but he didn’t mean her any harm. 

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” Shane says, which makes Ryan furrow his brow a little. It’s cute.

But Shane isn’t lying – when the people they know overlap, which happens more often than Ryan will ever know, Ryan’s taste in friends and enemies is pretty much in line with Shane’s. For instance, Ryan will never know how long Inanna had been annoying Shane before she moved on to annoying Ryan. 

(And _God_ , is Inanna ever annoying. She was powerful once, a long, _long_ time ago, but times change and she needs to _let it go_. Instead, she goes begging, over-eager, to people like Shane, people like Ryan, and eventually she’s going to get herself into a mess she can’t get herself out of. Not today, though. Today, she led Shane to Ryan, however unintentionally, so Shane is feeling nice.) 

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” Shane says again. “But I want you to drink with _me_ tonight.” He licks his lips, just to watch Ryan watch him do it, then laughs at him for it. 

“And maybe, after,” Shane says, quiet, “you can play a game with me.” 

Shane lets his gaze slide over toward the pool table, and Ryan shivers again—smart boy.

“So take the rest of the night off, close up early. Tell your friend to go home and uh…”—he nudges Inanna’s comatose form with his toe— “Maybe have her drop this lady off at an ER on her way? I don’t think she’s waking up any time soon.” 

Ryan takes a steadying breath. He’s still watching Shane’s mouth. 

“Sure,” he says, after a moment. His voice sounds surer than he looks, like he’s steeling himself. “I can do that.” 

Shane watches as Ryan pours himself his own tumbler of whiskey, then barks a little laugh when Ryan takes it like a shot. He notices that Ryan’s hands don’t shake, though, and that there’s no hesitation in his step as he heads off back towards the back room. 

Shane is almost proud.

****

*****

Back in the back room, Ryan permits himself a silent, ten second long panic attack. 

_Fuck! FUCK. FUUUUUUUUCK._

There is a very tall, very hot, very dangerous man in Ryan’s bar right now, and quite honestly? Ryan is struggling to cope. He’s exhausting all his acting chops staying cool and confident and flirty out there, when about 50% of his traitorous brain wants to run screaming into the desert night, and the other 50% of his brain wants to drop to his knees and suck the guy’s dick right in front of his unconscious bar patron. 

He usually doesn’t have like…an _excessive_ amount of chill, but he usually has more than _this._

 _Be cool,_ he tells himself. _Be calm. Fake it ‘til you make it, like you’ve always done._

There is a very attractive man in his bar that can probably kill him, or worse, and that’s just the situation they’re in right now. Ryan’s been in that situation before, and he’s come out ok. And hey— nobody who’s tried to murder him before now has been _nearly_ as attractive as Shane, so uh. Progress? 

Though most of the people who’ve tried to murder Ryan have ended up murdered right back, which in Shane’s case seems like it would be a crying shame. He’s way too beautiful to die. 

Also, Ryan wouldn’t bet the ranch on the fact that Shane _can_ die, so there’s that, as well. 

_FUUUUUUUUCK._

_Be cool. You can’t freak out in front of Sara. Sara needs you to be cool._

Come to think of it, where _is_ Sara? The back room looks practically empty, except for Micki and Dori, who’ve cuddled up in their crate in the corner like the good girls they are. 

“Sara?” Ryan calls out. “Sara, it’s just me. You can come out.” 

There’s a pause and then – “Back here.” Sara’s voice, hoarse and quiet, is coming from behind the couch, so Ryan walks around to find her.

Sara’s curled up on herself behind the couch, wrapped around her familiar, an orange cat named Obi, who’s purring in her lap. 

Sara looks terrified, and it breaks Ryan’s heart a little, even if he can’t say that terror is an _inappropriate_ emotion for the situation they’re currently in. He crouches down beside her, puts a hand on her shoulder for a reassuring squeeze. 

Sara stops petting Obi to squeeze the back of Ryan’s hand, right over the crescent moon tattoo. Ryan reaches up to Sara’s face with his other hand, runs his thumb over Sara’s own tattoo—a tiny star at the outside corner of her right eye, with a matching one on the left. Ryan tattooed her himself, three years ago, when she first joined his staff. He hopes that by touching her here, this delicate area so close to her eye where she trusted him before, he can inspire her trust again now. 

“Hey,” Ryan says, soothingly. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

Sara’s head snaps up at that, and Ryan can tell she doesn’t quite believe him.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he rephrases, which is more accurate, and Sara’s expression softens a little. “He sent me back here to tell you to go home, and take Inanna to an ER on your way.”

Relief washes over Sara’s features for a moment, and then –

“Inanna said the _neighbors_ were looking in, Ryan,” Sara says, meaningfully. “Is he, uh… Is the tall guy the neighbors?” 

Ryan doesn’t lie to his employees. 

“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Yeah, I think so.” 

Sara shudders. 

“ _Please_ be careful,” Sara pleads. “I don’t know what we’d do if something happened to you.” 

Ryan has a plan for just that, actually, which, assuming all goes to plan, will reveal itself to the people he loves in spectacular fashion, in the event of his death. He doesn’t think that would be particularly helpful to tell Sara right now, though, even if she does become 1/5 owner of the bar, with Curly, Jen, Zach, and Steven. 

Sara’s going to be so good at the tattoos. If Ryan does bite the bullet tonight, the bar staff of the future are going to be _art._

“Something’s _always_ happening to me, Sara,” Ryan says, truthfully. The coup attempts have slowed down in the past couple of years, but Sara’s seen him fight for his life before. “But in this case… honestly, I— I think he likes me.” _And I like him,_ he doesn’t say. _Oops._

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Sara says, and honestly, neither does Ryan. “But I trust your judgement.” 

That makes one of them. 

“So I just…take that lady to the nearest ER, then?” Sara asks and Ryan is relieved to see she’s finally calming down. “Aren’t they going to have questions for me, like…I don’t know, what her real name is? And what am I supposed to do if she wakes up on the way?” 

“Her license says her name Is Anna Astarte, if it comes up.” Ryan says; he carded her on her first visit for shits and grins—she looked at least twice 21, and very bitter about it. “But honestly, I’d just drop her off at the door with her bag and then high-tail it out of there. Shane seemed…pretty confident that she wouldn’t wake up for a while, but just in case, you’d better get moving.” 

Sara nods, and Ryan helps her to her feet. He takes her hand to guide her towards the door, as Obi rubs against her ankles as a goodbye, then trots off to his little cat bed in the corner. 

Sara’s almost to the door when she stops in her tracks like she’s hit a wall, and Ryan, still holding her hand, nearly trips at the sudden loss of momentum.

Beside him, Sara’s eyes are open wide. 

“ _...Shan?_ ” Sara says, and she says it like a realization, like an epiphany. Like a spell. “The tall man’s name is Shan?” 

Every living creature in the room abruptly sucks in a breath.

_OH SHIT._

It causes a notable change in the air pressure.

_FUCK._

The room grows notably colder; the shadows darken. From the back of the room, Ryan hears Micki and Dori whimper, hears Obi hiss. The charge in the atmosphere is back, the incipient lightning, the buildup to the thunderstorm.

Ryan’s eyes flick towards the door—

“Shane,” Ryan corrects quickly, with a meaningful look at Sara that he hopes gets across a nuanced message— _thank you so much for that, sincerely, you are a genius and I love you but that was extremely reckless and please do not ever do that again._

Sara nods, though. She gets it. It’s not _her_ fault she’s brave and brilliant—that’s why Ryan hired her. That’s why she’ll be great here, in Ryan’s place, if tonight doesn’t go his way. 

“Let’s get you out of here,” Ryan quickly adds.

****

*****

The tall man—called Shane, called Shax, called Scox, called, most recently, _Shan_ —has excellent hearing. 

He sips his whiskey and listens to the conversation in the back room. He so enjoys listening to Ryan’s calm, comforting voice, strong and steady even as Shane feels the panic in Ryan’s veins. Shane has always heard that Ryan’s a good leader, and it’s so good to see that the man stands up to the myth. So often, they don’t. _Inanna_ sure as fuck doesn’t. 

Shane isn’t paying much attention to the second voice, the woman’s voice, which he realizes is his mistake when she stops in her tracks—terrified, but halfway out of there, halfway to safety—when she stops cold and _names him._

_Well._

He hoped that Ryan would get there first, but honestly, he wasn’t expecting _anyone_ to get there quite so quickly. But then, it probably shouldn’t surprise him that Ryan, who is brave and cunning, befriends people who are, too. 

Shane wonders if anyone else knows about this Sara person. He’d be interested in learning more.

Ryan’s holding her hand as he leads her back into the main room. Shane has to resist the impulse to stare at Ryan as soon as he’s back in the room—Ryan is a _very_ distracting man, but Shane has the rest of the evening to look at him. He doesn’t have as long to study this fascinating new girl. 

Sara is tiny and pretty, with wild curly hair, dyed blue, that matches the blue stars at the corners of her eyes. She’s wearing an interesting t-shirt – screen printed, a cartoon of a girl with a cape and sword facing down a many-eyed monster, a hundred times her size. 

“Hello, Sara Rubin,” Shane says, when the pair stops in front of him. “Sara Elizabeth Rubin, from Connecticut,” he adds, because two can play that game. “I like your shirt.” 

“Thanks, _Shan_ , I made it myself,” Sara says quietly, and Shane _dissolves_ into laughter, the kind that makes him throw his head back, makes him wipe a tear away from his eye. 

“Oh,” he says, still laughing, “Sara Rubin, you’d better leave before I make you stay.” 

That gets Ryan moving. 

Ryan drops Sara’s hand to scoop up Inanna’s comatose body, and carries her, bridal style, to the exit while Sara and Shane lag behind. Shane doesn’t fail to notice that Ryan’s lifting Inanna like she weighs nothing, that Ryan’s plain black t-shirt is tight enough to show the flex of the muscles in his back as he moves. 

“Shane,” Ryan calls over his shoulder, “Could you get the door for me? My hands are full.” 

“Sure,” Shane says, walking over. Interesting, that even given an alternative option, Ryan’s still calling him ‘Shane’. It feels like a deliberate choice. It feels _affectionate_. 

Just as Shane gets to the door, in an instance of what he’ll later think of as really incredible comedic timing, a necklace with a black crystal pendant falls out from Inanna’s neckline to loll over her shoulder. 

All three of them stare at it, awkwardly. 

“Huh,” Ryan says, “Black tourmaline.” 

Shane and Sara reach for the necklace at the same time, but Shane gets there first. 

“Good stuff,” Shane says, and quickly unhooks the necklace before Sara can get her hands on it. “Keeps the shutters down.” He makes eye contact with Sara as he slides the necklace into his pocket. “Keeps the neighbors from looking in.” 

Shane is glad Ryan can’t Sara’s face from where she’s standing, because for a moment she looks _pissed_ , but then her expression softens to an irreverent little smile. Guess she wanted the necklace for herself. Well, you snooze you lose, and also Inanna definitely owed it to Shane after all the favors he’s done for her over the years. 

And yes, Shane _was_ counting getting Inanna out of Ryan’s bar relatively unscathed after a highly unsuccessful first, second and third impression as a favor, thank you _very_ much. _Ryan vs Inanna_ would’ve been a very entertaining match-up, but Shane wouldn’t have put money on Inanna’s odds of victory. 

Ryan hefts Inanna in arms where she’s slipping, and asks again – “Can you _please_ just get the door, Shane?” 

Shane does, and the bell chimes again, just as it did when he came in. Sara flips the sign in the window from “OPEN” to “CLOSED”. 

The trio steps out into the desert night. 

It’s almost brighter outside the bar than inside, between the light of the full moon overhead and the garish glow of the neon sign, still flashing “Ryan’s Bar” into the empty Mojave sky. There’s a quiet honk as Sara unlocks the door to her SUV, the only car in the parking lot apart from Inanna’s red Mercedes. 

Sara pulls open the passenger side door, and Ryan awkwardly shuffles Inanna’s limp body into the seat, and buckles her in. Her head slumps over, onto the window. 

Shane, watching the whole song-and-dance from a few feet away, and generally being completely unhelpful, calls out, “You sure you don’t want to take Inanna’s car? Get a free Mercedes out of this whole weird evening?” 

“Tempting,” Ryan says back, grinning. “But I don’t think Sara’s ready to add grand theft auto to her resume just yet.” 

“Ah,” Shane says, stepping up closer to the driver’s side window where Sara’s currently buckling in. He hopes she can hear him through the glass. 

“Well, when you _are_ ready, Sara,” Shane says, softly, “just give me a call.” 

Sara turns to him then, meets his eyes through the glass of her car window. 

She doesn’t look terrified anymore. In fact, she’s smiling. 

She nods. 

Then she looks away to pull out of the parking lot. 

Ryan and Shane watch her car as she drives out of the lot and onto the sand-and-gravel road outside, as she veers right at the Joshua tree and finally disappears into the desert night. 

“Let’s drink,” Ryan says.

****

*****


	2. Chapter 2

Inside, Ryan decides it’s time for them to switch to tequila. 

He has some of the good stuff from Mexico in the back, the kind that you serve perfectly chilled and that’s smooth enough to sip neat. Ryan bought it over a year ago, when he traveled down to Tijuana for supplies, but he’s been hiding it away from the customers, saving it for a special occasion. Over a year has passed, but no occasion has seemed quite special enough. 

If today isn’t a special occasion, though, nothing is. 

Special occasions don’t have to be _nice_ to be special. 

Bottle of tequila in hand, Ryan leads Shane away from the bar, over to one of the booths on the other side of the room. Ryan scoots in first and Shane follows after, crowding him in on the same side of the booth, like Ryan knew he would. Shane’s legs are almost too long to fit under the table; there’s a hot line where Shane’s left hip is pressed up against Ryan’s right, and Shane’s left arm reaches around Ryan to rest on top of the seatback. Ryan’s pretty sure that arm’s going to end up around his shoulders in the near future, which would be a hilariously high-school move for a malevolent entity, but also seems to be Shane’s style. 

“Does it make you self-conscious,” Ryan asks, pouring the tequila, “that the longer people know you, the less afraid of you they become?” 

Shane shrugs. 

“I’m going to be honest, that’s not the general pattern. Guess you and Sara are just _special_.” 

Shane leers at him a little, and Ryan does _not_ blush, thank you. 

Ryan raises his glass for a toast. 

“To a long life,” he says, optimistically. 

“Or at least an interesting one,” Shane says, and grins like a shark. 

Shane clinks his glass against Ryan’s, and drinks long and deep. When Shane’s glass hits the table again, it’s more than half empty. 

_“Fuck_ , this is really good tequila, Ryan.” 

“Flatterer,” Ryan says, grinning. 

“I’m actually well-known not to be one of those,” Shane says. “Marvelous speaker and truth-teller, that’s me. I know when other people are lying, though.” 

“Oh?” 

“And I know that you haven’t lied to me at all. Not even once. And I love that.” 

That left arm is drifting down to settle around Ryan’s shoulders, like Ryan knew it would. When it finds its target, Shane squeezes him a little, and Ryan is reminded of strangler vines and boa constrictors. 

A moment passes, they sip their drinks. Ryan really likes this tequila too, honestly. It starts smooth, then burns going down, and it hurts in the very best way. 

Shane finishes his first glass and Ryan pours him another. Ryan is incredibly aware of the warm lines where their bodies touch— at the hip, down the thigh, the pressure of Shane’s arm around Ryan’s back. Shane’s left hand starts absently tracing patterns on Ryan’s left shoulder, through his t-shirt. Ryan shivers in a way that he doesn’t think is completely from fear. 

“But you _are_ still afraid of me, right Ryan?” Shane asks softly, as if reading Ryan’s thoughts. Maybe he is. “Tell me you’re still a _little_ scared, right?” 

“Of course I’m afraid of you,” Ryan says, laughing, turning his face up to smile up at Shane, whose expression has turned to one of open delight. “I’m not _stupid_.” 

Shane squeezes Ryan in tighter against him. 

“God, Ryan, I like that _so much_.” 

Ryan moves in further, because at this point, _why not_ , presses his cheek to Shane’s chest. He can hear Shane’s heartbeat, and it’s faster than he would’ve expected. 

Shane puts his mouth to the top of Ryan’s head. 

“I like _you_ so much,” Shane whispers into Ryan’s hair. 

“I like you too, big guy,” Ryan says, and Shane actually wheezes with laughter. “You’re terrifying,” Ryan says, as Shane pulls away a little to catch his breath, “but I like you.” 

Shane finishes his second glass of tequila like it’s a shot, and Ryan pours him a third, and sips his own. Ryan’s drinking a little more slowly than Shane is, but they’re both making steady progress through the bottle. Ryan wonders if Shane can get drunk. 

_Ryan’s_ certainly starting to feel the tequila; he’s feeling looser, more relaxed, and most concerning, he’s losing track of Shane’s movements around him. First Shane’s hand is on his shoulder, then drawing back across Ryan’s back, and then Shane catches Ryan’s wrist, and Ryan should _not_ like the way Shane’s long fingers wrap all the way around his wrist, shouldn’t like the way Shane pins his hand to the table, shouldn’t like the tingle he feels _(from the back of his hand, up his arm, down his spine, and yes, that tingle certainly ends somewhere in his groin region, doesn’t it)_ as the index finger of Shane’s other hand traces reverently over Ryan’s crescent moon tattoo, like he’s never seen anything like it before. 

Shit. Shane probably hasn’t seen anything like Ryan’s tattoo before, or at least hasn’t touched and stroked and _studied_ it in detail. Nobody else has been dumb enough to let him, until now. 

Ryan starts to pull his hand away, but Shane suddenly looks _so sad_ and Ryan _hates that_. So Ryan compromises like the businessman he is, laces their fingers together and hides their joined hands out of sight under the table. Ryan laughs when Shane stops pouting and smiles like the cat that got the canary, though honestly, Ryan might be the canary. 

“You’re definitely the canary, little guy.” 

“Cheers to that,” Ryan says, nonsensically, and they pick up their glasses with their free hands, clink them together, and drink again. 

Time starts to go a little fuzzy after that. At some point, Shane must let go of Ryan’s hand, because his arm is wrapped around Ryan’s back again, he’s running his palm and fingers over Ryan’s shoulder in soothing geometric patterns that gradually get less and less soothing until each stroke of Shane’s finger feels like it’s sending a hot pulse of arousal directly though Ryan’s shoulder, down his spine, down through his cock. Shane’s mouth is pressed against Ryan’s temple and Ryan wishes with every power he has, wishes that Shane would just kiss him already like he clearly wants to, because Ryan feels like he’s dying for it, wants to press his mouth to Shane’s and climb into his lap, wants to wrap himself around Shane and have Shane wrap around him in turn. He feels like Shane would kiss him if he asked, would touch him if he asked, but Ryan’s tongue feels like molasses in his mouth, and Shane’s mouth is otherwise occupied. 

Shane is whispering directly into Ryan’s ear, and Ryan hears himself laughing, even when he doesn’t quite catch exactly what Shane’s trying to say. It’s so warm here, curled into Shane’s body, with Ryan’s cheeks flushed and his head fuzzy from the tequila. Shane is drawing on Ryan’s shoulder with his hand again, whispering almost-kisses into Ryan’s ear. Shane’s voice is fast and soft and at a certain point, Ryan realizes he’s not speaking English anymore. 

This happens right around the time that the quick little motions of Shane’s index finger on Ryan’s left shoulder get faster, sharper, and Ryan wonders, belatedly, if letting the malevolent entity doodle sigils onto his delts whilst speaking in tongues might actually be a _bad_ idea. 

“It’s such a bad idea,” Shane says, happily, directly into Ryan’s ear. “And I have several more bad ideas to propose, but you need to sober up first.”

Shane snaps his fingers.

It’s like somebody just dumped a bucket of ice water over Ryan’s head. 

In a millisecond, Ryan goes from three-sheets-to-the-wind intoxicated to completely and painfully sober. 

Except, not painfully. Ryan takes stock of his body, the lack of headache, the absence of nausea—he has absolutely no trace of a hangover. He just, pretty much instantaneously, went from a state of _drunk_ to a state of _not drunk_. He notes with some embarrassment that his _dick is still hard_ , so apparently his overwhelming, borderline-suicidal attraction to Shane isn’t a function of the alcohol. 

“Neat trick,” Ryan says, turning to look up at Shane and – yep, definitely still earth-shatteringly attracted to him, even stone-cold sober. “But is the party over already?”

“Hardly,” Shane says. “I still want to play a game, remember?”—and here he glances over to the pool table, and then straight back at Ryan, eyes flashing— “But contracts made under the influence aren’t legally binding.” 

Ryan pulls back away from Shane. He looks away from his face, because he knows the hurt shows in his eyes. 

Ryan shouldn’t be hurt. He definitely shouldn’t be taken aback, like this is a surprise or something. He’s known this was coming from the very beginning, from the very moment Shane first darkened his doorway.

He appreciates that Shane sobered him up for this, but he’s still not ready. 

Because Ryan’s got to say _no_ , of course. He’s got to. He’s been in this situation before; he knows how to handle it. When people like Shane come knocking, you’re supposed to turn them away without a second thought. _"You’ve got nothing I need,"_ that’s what you say to people like Shane, and then you slam the door and lock it tight. _"You’ve got nothing I need."_

_But with Shane, that’s not quite true, is it? He **does** have something you need. And you’ve known it since the second he walked into your bar and the lights went out and his face lit up and the air turned sharp like lightning. _

And Ryan thinks he might’ve promised that he’d never lie to Shane. 

_You’ve got nothing I need,_ he wants to say, but the words turn to ash in his mouth.

“What makes you think I’ll do a deal with you?” Ryan asks, instead. 

Shane shrugs. 

“I don’t know that you will, honestly,” Shane says, voice circumspect. “You’re in full possession of your cognitive faculties, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not a risky proposition. The smartest move, the safest move, would be to say no.” Shane pushes his glass of tequila away from himself, like he’s done for the night. “Say no, and I’ll walk out that door right now, no game, no deal. You’ll never hear from me again.” 

And that’s Shane’s trump card. That’s his play. And the worst part of it all is, Ryan _knows_ that’s his play, and Shane knows that Ryan knows, knows he can ask Ryan to do anything and Ryan will do it, because Ryan just _doesn’t want this to be over._

_Nice reverse psychology, dickhead,_ Ryan thinks, and Shane laughs, because, of course, he hears him.

“I want to know your terms,” Ryan says. “I’m not saying yes,” Ryan adds quickly. _Not yet, at least._ “I’m not saying yes, just…tell me your terms.” 

“I told you,” Shane says, and oh, he’s smiling that jungle cat smile again. “I want to play a game. A game of skill, one on one, and I think you know the traditional ante. _Bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, ‘cause I think I’m better than you._ As they say.”

“I can’t say I’m much of a fiddler,” Ryan says. “So if that’s how you want to go, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.” He really hopes he sounds nonchalant, or at least like he’s weighing his options, rather than the unholy amalgamation of _desperate-terrified-incomprehensibly-turned-on_ he’s actually feeling. 

“Pool then,” Shane says. “I’m sure you get a lot of practice in. But I should warn you that I’m pretty good myself—it’s the long arms and the big hands, I think.” He stretches his hands out flat on the table, then, like he knows exactly what those long fingers do to Ryan. What they _could_ do. 

So…probably Ryan’s not succeeding at hiding the scared-and-horny, then. 

“What’s in it for me?” Ryan asks. “I mean, this is a pretty high-risk undertaking for me. It needs to come with a pretty great reward.” 

Shane positively beams. 

“Oh _Ryan,_ ” he says, elated. “If you win, I swear—if you win, the _second_ you win, I’ll give you whatever it is that you want most in the whole entire world, right then. Right that second. It’ll be so good Ryan, _so_ good, please say yes.” 

_Well. Not bad._

“I know it’s not bad,” Shane says. “I don’t make bad deals. _Please_ say yes, Ryan,”—and wow, is that a note of desperation in Shane’s voice that Ryan hears? 

“Please say yes,” Shane says again, and yes it almost sounds like he’s…begging. “Say yes.”

And in the cadence of Shane’s voice, the affection and the desperation, Ryan hears the words that Shane murmured into his hair while they drank. 

_I like you so much, Ryan._

_I’d never lie to you._

“Take the deal, Ryan.” 

Ryan closes his eyes. He can’t think. Shane’s voice is in his ears and in his memories, and it’s too loud. 

_Drink with me tonight._

_To an interesting life._

“Say yes.” 

He remembers how the words Shane pressed into his temple turned slowly from sweet-nothings to whispers in a language that Ryan didn’t know. He thinks that now, on the edge of doing something truly, irrevocably stupid, now he understands their meaning. 

_I want to swallow you whole, Ryan. I want to eat your soul, I want to keep you, all your beauty and your bravery and power, I want to keep you inside of me forever. It won’t hurt, Ryan, I’d never hurt you, never lie, it will be so so good, Ryan, I promise. Say yes._

_“Say yes.”_

Ryan’s eyes snap open. 

"Oh, what the hell,” Ryan says. “Yes.” 


	3. Chapter 3

The best part of making a deal—not counting, of course, the part at the end when you win and things get _really_ good—but the best part of actually _making_ the deal, Shane thinks, is sealing it with a kiss.

Shane grabs Ryan by the back of the head and crushes their lips together.

 _Yes_ , Shane thinks happily, as he finally gets to feel Ryan’s mouth part under his, finally gets to press his tongue to Ryan’s, _finally_ gets to taste him, _this part is very good too_. 

Ryan is, of course, delicious. Shane knew he would be.

The funny thing is though, Shane thinks, as they both kiss like they’re dying for it, all clacking teeth and fists pulling at each other’s hair, Ryan biting at Shane’s lips like maybe he wants to see whether or not he bleeds— _the funny thing is—_ like, yeah, Shane certainly wants to eat Ryan right up. But maybe Ryan wants to devour Shane a little bit, too.

An intriguing concept. Shane might have to give that some thought.

But not right now. Right now, Ryan is hot and present and moving like a storm rolling into the desert. Shane’s crowding Ryan backwards into the corner of the booth and Ryan’s going willingly, and when they run out of real-estate, Ryan’s legs are coming up to circle around Shane’s hips; Shane’s dropping his vice-grip on Ryan’s hair only to spread his hands across Ryan’s back and pull him up so that he’s seated fully in Shane’s lap.

And apparently Ryan’s enjoying the change in position, the friction, the slide of his cock against Shane’s thigh as Shane pulls him in, because Shane doesn’t even have to _try_ to hear the _yesyesyesfuuuuuck_ that echoes through Ryan’s mind.

Shane _also_ likes these new seating arrangements quite a bit, he has to admit, and bites Ryan’s plush lower lip as a kind of thank you.

Because, curled into his lap like this, it’s even more obvious how much smaller Ryan is than Shane. Shane’s hands span almost the breadth of Ryan’s back; Ryan’s shoulders are muscular but still narrow enough to tuck up neatly into Shane’s chest as they kiss, and when Shane moves his hands from Ryan’s back to cup around his face, his palms and fingers span from jaw to hairline, with room to spare. 

Ryan is just…so little. So cute. How could Shane _not_ just want to engulf him, to trap him in his rib cage like a little canary?

And just because, yes, Shane _is_ actually somewhat evil, thank you, he grinds his hips up into Ryan’s. Just so to help Ryan realize where else Shane is _so much bigger_ than him.

Shane watches, as Ryan realizes.

Ryan pulls back from the kiss to look at Shane with wide eyes, pupils blown so large and dark that Ryan could almost be a demon himself.

“ _Fuck,”_ Ryan says, with feeling.

“Not yet,” Shane says. He taps Ryan on the nose. “We still gotta play pool, remember?”

*****

Shane taps Ryan on the nose, and Ryan feels the binding magic of the demon deal snap shut around his wrists. That sensation—demon magic clamped tight like handcuffs, an unbreakable pact—is enough to _finally_ pulls him out of whatever _sexual fugue state_ being around Shane seems to be putting him into.

Ryan could tell if he were being bewitched, love spelled, seduced; he’s woven charms into his tattoos to guard against it permanently. So truly, the only explanation for his current behavior is some kind of temporary insanity. With Ryan’s job being as high-stress as it is, with the threat of death being always so present, it’s not that Ryan didn't expect to have a mental break someday.

This breakdown is just…a lot hornier than he was expecting.

It’s a lot to deal with.

He’s just made a deal with a demon. Sure, okay. People do that. Demon-deals are sealed with a kiss. Standard practice.

But Ryan is sitting. On a demon’s. Lap.

Ryan can feel the demon’s _erection_ pressed up against his own. And he let the demon dirty talk to him about _eating his soul_ like it’s a new kink he wants to try out and it’s all just…a lot to take in.

Ryan’s still sort of processing those facts when Shane nudges Ryan out of his lap, grabs Ryan by the wrists, and pulls him out from behind the booth, over to the pool table. He has just barely enough presence of mind to grab the athame from the bar and slide it subtly into his pocket.

“I can set up for the game,” Ryan says shakily.

It’ll give himself something to do with his hands, and right now, he’s not sure he’ll be able to resist the urge to palm his dick through his jeans.

It’ll also give him something to do with his mind. Because right now, if Ryan’s brain were a top 40 radio station, all 40 would be endless repeats of a little mantra of _Shaneshaneshane_ , with maybe a couple of odes to Shane’s beard and dick mixed in. But at some point, Ryan’s going to have to think of an actual game plan, here.

Because Ryan does still actually want to _win_ this thing. He doesn’t _actually_ want Shane to eat his soul, no matter how sexy Shane makes it sound.

Focus.

Back to basics then. The best strategies are simple, elegant ones. The strongest spells get back to the root of his practice—channeling the energy of the Mojave outside.

So Ryan sets up for the pool game like he’s laying out his altar.

The triangular rack of colorful balls is two points shy of a pentacle. The 8-ball in its center could stand for a cauldron. 1-ball at the apex, stripes at the north corner, solids at the south. The pool-cue is clearly a wand. They store thick, drippy candles in a cupboard near the pool table, and Ryan places four of them in a ring around the pool table.

“It’s too fucking dark in here,” Ryan says by way of absolutely transparent explanation as he slides the fourth candle into place.

“Who doesn’t like a little mood lighting?” Shane says mildly. It doesn’t seem like he’s paying much attention. He’s walking slowly around the table, looking at the rails, the pockets, the colorful little triangle of billiard balls in the center.

He slides up behind Ryan, _way_ too close for comfort, bodies almost flush—and Shane rests his chin atop Ryan’s head. And Ryan lets him, because this is his life now, apparently, this is who he is—the kind of person whose pants get too tight when a gangly, well-endowed demon tries to spoon with him standing up.

Shane’s long arms wrap around Ryan’s middle from behind and his long fingers slide up Ryan’s thighs.

“Is that a ceremonial knife in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Ryan twists away, out of Shane’s arms, and _slams_ the athame down onto the pool table.

“It’s a ceremonial knife.”

The circle of candles flares blindingly to life, each candle shooting its column of flame ten, twelve feet into the air until they lick dangerously against the bar ceiling. The tips of the flames spread out horizontally across the ceiling to form a ring of flame above the pool table, around Shane and Ryan, and Shane has to let go of Ryan to jump back out of the literal line of fire as it passes him by. Then he throws back his head and laughs.

“Now _that’s_ what I’m talking about, Ryan!” Shane crows. “ _There’s_ the vicious little witch I’ve heard about!”

Ryan pants a little, rubs at the backs of his hands. Part of him wants to preen at the compliment, and part of him wants to fall over, because pulling a ring of fire up from nowhere feels a little like doing sprint drills in the Mojave. But Shane can’t know that.

 _No sweat_ , Ryan tells himself, _stay cool._

“Nice to hear I’m doing well enough for myself to make it to the demon rumor mill,” he says, mildly.

“You’re doing _so well_ Ryan, you don’t even know,” Shane says. He starts to walk around the edges of the floating ring, like he’s testing the boundaries. The flames at the ceiling reach out to him, reach down to lick at his hair, and when Shane reaches a hand up to touch them he pulls back like he’s been stung.

He looks delighted about it.

“You don’t even want to know how long I’ve been wanting to meet you, Ryan. Ryan, leader of the upstart little SoCal coven that killed Zirbanit. Ryan, who battled the last priestess of Ereshkigal; Ryan, who turned away Astaroth and all his temptations.”

Shane pauses for just a split second to draw breath then adds on—

“Also, Ryan, brief aside but I’m just dying to know—did you kill your mentor?"

And isn’t that just a _story for another day._ It seems Shane knows just enough about him not to underestimate him, and also just enough of his secrets to be dangerous. It’s not a great combination. He’d prefer to get this show on the road.

“Are we gonna fucking play pool or what?” Ryan asks darkly. “Astaroth wasn’t half as chatty as you are.”

There’s a palpable drop in the atmospheric pressure.

“Oh,” Shane says. “We’re gonna _fucking play_ alright. _”_

All of a sudden, the air around them smells like ozone.

Shane’s grin in the candlelight is very white and very sharp. He’s not holding Ryan anymore, but Ryan is suddenly conscious that Shane is once again very, _very_ close.

“Do you want to see my party-trick, Ryan?” Shane asks. His voice is low and dark. Ryan nods, ever so slightly—what other option is there?

Shane snaps his fingers.

Three things happen, all at once:

One: there’s a sound like an explosion—thunder, maybe, or maybe the act of just opening the sky and dropping a downpour that belongs a thousand miles away makes a crash like the hammer of God.

Two: the sky opens in a deluge, fat raindrops landing with dull thuds onto the sand outside, then rolling down towards lower ground—flash flood rain.

Three: Shane’s eyes go solid black.

It only rains in the Mojave a handful of times a year. That means that today, Ryan thinks, absurdly, is a very special day.

“Ground-rules,” Shane says, curt, clipped, suddenly all business. “We’re playing standard 8-ball. One game. I’m sinking the solid-color balls,”—Shane holds up a hand before Ryan can even open his mouth to object—“And no, you don’t get to ask how I know that in advance. It’s not demon magic; it’s called being good at pool. Figure it out.”

Thunder cracks again, and the windows rattle. The deluge of rain outside is so loud, Shane has to project his voice to be heard as he goes on.

“Once I sink all the solids, I’ll call a pocket for the 8-ball. And once I pocket the 8-ball, I win. And _please_ , no whiny little ‘best-two-outta-three’ when you lose. Have some dignity. We’re playing one game, and it’s winner take all.”

At that, Shane licks his lips like the actual demon he is.

“Questions? Comments?”

“You have to stop reading my mind,” Ryan says, because he has to, not because he thinks it will work. “That has to be cheating.”

“No dice, Ryan. You think too loud. I couldn’t keep from hearing you if I tried.”

That stings, and not just because it’s going to be really fucking difficult to win a strategy game against a mind reader. It also stings because Ryan had convinced himself he’d been pulling one over on Shane, building the ring of fire and trapping them both at the pool table. But no, Shane was one step ahead of him even then, and allowing Ryan to weaken him, however nominally, was a conscious choice, something Shane let Ryan get away with because he wanted to see what Ryan was capable of.

“Fine. If you can read my mind, then I can cast.”

Shane smiles at him in a way that is at once hungry and patronizing.

“Oh, I really hope you will, Ryan. Put on a show with your _witch powers_. Put a spell on me, because you’re _mine_.”

It’s humiliating, being spoken to like that. Ryan’s spent the last seven years of his life proving that he’s worthy of being treated with respect. He leads a coven. People come to him; they seek his favor, they seek out the secrets of the universe in his magical California bar.

Shane has no right to speak to him that way. And that’s what makes it hot as fuck.

“Just break the damn rack, Shane,” Ryan says, but even he can hear the breathless tone of his own voice.

“Guests first,” Shane says, chalking the tip of his pool cue. “I like it.” He steps to the head of the table.

And god damn it, Shane’s eyes may have turned black, his manner may have changed from playful and flirtatious to efficient, seductive, and cruel; he may be showing every sign of getting down to the demonic business of eating Ryan’s soul—but god damn it if Ryan isn’t fucking hypnotized by how good his hands look around the pool cue.

Shane encircles the pool cue with his thumb and his index finger, guides it back and forth across his middle finger as he takes aim at the white cue ball.

Ryan wants those fingers in his _fucking mouth._

Shane shoots. Somehow, the little shattering noise of that colorful triangle of billiard balls exploding outwards in all directions sounds louder than the thunder and the wind outside.

As promised, Shane’s first shot sinks the solid red 3-ball.

“Told you.”

“Guess I’m sinking stripes, then,” Ryan says.

Ryan knows what he should do here; he’s played enough—he should study the position of the balls on the table, find his key-balls, plan his angles.

He can’t be bothered. It doesn’t matter. If there’s a means of escape from this night, a route to victory, a loophole—the way out won’t be by being better at pool than Shane. It’ll be because Ryan finds a way to outsmart Shane, somehow, even though Shane has a mental front-row seat to Ryan’s every strategy.

Easy peasy. _No sweat_. Totally not impossible at all, except for all the ways it seems totally impossible.

Ryan takes an easy shot to start; just a warm-up for his confidence’s sake, and pockets the striped blue 10-ball.

“You’re not gonna figure it out,” Shane taunts, taking aim at another one of his balls. It’s an unnecessarily difficult shot, a weird angle to attempt so early in the game and it sends the cue ball perilously close to the 8-ball, itself dangerously close to a pocket. If Shane sinks the 8-ball too soon, he loses automatically.

Ryan holds his breath.

Shane takes the shot.

The cue ball brushes the 8-ball just slightly.

For a moment, Ryan’s heart soars, then—no, Shane’s angle is just right to move the 8-ball _out_ of the danger zone, and then the cue sails past to sink the solid yellow 1-ball that Shane is aiming for.

“Easy peasy,” Shane says. “No sweat.”

Ryan thought Shane was overwhelmingly attractive when he was drinking liquor and staring at Ryan like he was the most interesting person in the world. He thought Shane was overwhelmingly attractive when he kissed him, called him cute, pulled him into his lap and made him feel small. And now Shane is suddenly mean, competent and condescending, and god damn it if Ryan still wouldn’t run off to the bathroom to jerk off if they weren’t both stuck in the ring of fire. 

And also, Ryan thinks belatedly, if Ryan weren’t _actively and currently_ battling Shane for his soul.

But in that battle, Shane’s shots are starting to slow down a bit. He’s taking longer and longer pauses between them, longer contemplative moments as he stalks around the table, considering his next move. Shane’s getting more measured, more thoughtful, even though he’s still solidly ahead. For the life of him, Ryan can’t figure out why.

Is Shane getting nervous? Is Ryan playing better than Shane thought he would?

Ryan’s certainly playing _differently_ from how he normally would: as Shane’s turns get longer, slower, more considered, Ryan gets faster, more reckless. Ryan is circling the table, but at almost double Shane’s speed; he’s trying to put as little forethought into his moves as he can get away with, without accidentally doing something so disastrous that it makes him automatically lose.

Yeah, he’s getting behind Shane in terms of the number of balls he’s sunk, but Shane can’t plan for Ryan’s strategy if Ryan doesn’t have a strategy, right? So he’s snatching tiny opportunities as soon as he notices them, playing the short-game, thinking about his next move only when it’s time to take his turn and just hoping that magic 8-ball works out for him.

It’s very different from the way Ryan’s lived his life for the past seven years, and actually, it’s weirdly nice to just live in the moment like this. To stop being careful and just let go.

Ryan literally spins around, hits the cue-ball towards the first striped ball he sees, and sinks the striped 12-ball _directly_ into the corner pocket with a satisfying _thunk_

Ryan lets himself preen a little. It feels _good_ to play like this. To stop thinking so much. To stop trying so hard.

Ryan misses on his next shot, badly, gets dangerously close to knocking the 8-ball in the center-pocket but he can’t even care. Playing like this just feels too good.

It feels free.

It feels chaotic.

It feels—

It feels like something a demon would want him to feel.

Ryan looks up.

Shane’s answering smile across the table is all black eyes and cold malice.

“Yeah,” Shane says. “That’s not how you win, Ryan.”

Whatever the way through this is, it’s got to be a strategy that won’t fall apart once Shane knows about it. A strategy that Shane can’t correct for, but that he’s powerless to stop.

But it’s not just giving up and letting nature run its course. It’s something else. It must be.

The athame on the rail of the pool table glints in the candle light, like a reminder.

Ryan hasn’t forgotten that he’s allowed to cast. When they set the ground-rules it sounded like his biggest asset. But spell-casting takes ritual, which takes forethought, which means Shane can anticipate his moves because _Shane can read his goddamn mind._ And Ryan might be the baddest witch in SoCal, but thanks to Sara’s stroke of name-game genius, Ryan knows that Shane is fucking Shan is Shax is a literal god damn _Great Marquis of Hell_ , so _yeah_ , big guy’s probably got some counter-spells up his sleeve.

“Just two moves until I win, Ryan,” Shane taunts. “One, if I can sink the 4 and the 8 in the same turn. I understand the temptation, to draw this out, to delay the inevitable, but you gotta take your turn.”

Ryan takes aim, but it’s so hard to focus, between the storm and the fear and the _Shaneshaneshane._ Ryan can’t help wondering what it will feel like when Shane eats his soul. He wonders if it will be anything like kissing him.

Ryan’s whole body shudders at the thought, and unfortunately, it’s just as his pool-stick comes into contact with the cue ball.

The ball heads off in a wildly different trajectory than he planned, knocking Shane’s ball, knocking the 8-ball as it careens past, but then it hits a stripe, sunk, and then another…!

Against all odds, the shake is somehow just right to sink not one but _two_ striped balls, and now he’s only one behind Shane.

Maybe chaos works out in his favor, sometimes.

“Just about as often as it works against you,” Shane says.

Ryan holds his breath; it's Shane’s turn now. And Shane could _win_ this turn, Ryan sees, with the way Ryan’s knocked the 4 and the 8-ball into alignment. If Shane hits this shot just hard enough, if he banks the cue-ball just right, he'll sink them both. Shane’s circling the table like a predator circling its prey.

He stops.

He takes aim.

He’s not in the right spot.

There _is_ an angle, Ryan sees, that sinks both the 4 and the 8 this shot, that wins the game for Shane, and – _what is his game here?_ – for some reason it’s not where Shane’s aiming.

“Oh is there?” Shane says mildly, moving to exactly the place Ryan's thinking of. “Thanks for the tip."

Shane takes aim.

Ryan chokes on his own breath. He can hear his heart in his throat, as loud as the thunder outside, and Shane dropped a _whole fucking thunderstorm_ into the desert. How could Ryan ever think that he could beat him?

The thunder crashes just as Shane strikes the cue-ball, and this time the rumble is deafening; it shakes the trees; it shakes the window, it shakes the _table_ , and there’s a high pitched whine as something important and electrical shorts out and the beer signs all go dark, and the cue ball is rolling, rolling—Shane’s aim is perfect.

No—Shane’s aim _was_ perfect, but he couldn’t account for the second crash of thunder that shakes the table like an earthquake.

The 4 and the 8 both miss the pockets by miles, and the cue ball slides into the corner pocket instead. A scratch.

There’s a sudden gasp, and Ryan realizes it’s himself—that he’s finally breathing again.

“I am compelled to make a Jurassic Park reference right now,” Shane says mildly. “And for the life of me I can’t figure out why.”

Ryan blinks. His heart is still coming back online.

“You’ve seen Jurassic Park?” he wheezes out.

“Baby, I _made_ Jurassic Park. Who do you think Spielberg sold his soul to for his directorial success?”

Ryan stares at him, open-mouthed.

“Just kidding. It was Astaroth.”

Ryan just blinks again. He’d been millimeters away from getting his soul eaten—no, not millimeters away, it had been _about to happen_ , and then it was like Shane’s own storm intervened on his behalf, literally shook the table, and now Shane is talking about iconic ‘90s movies, and what is Shane’s _game_ here?

“Do you control the storm?” Ryan asks, when he finds his voice again.

Shane snaps his fingers, points straight at Ryan.

“ _That’s_ the reference, thank you, Ryan. Jeff Goldblum, talking about the butterfly effect. _A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine_. You remember?”

Ryan remembers. Then he does the sexy water thing on Laura Dern’s hand. Jurassic Park is one of Ryan’s favorite movies. Also, he’s never moved so rapidly from a near death experience to Jeff Goldblum quotes, and his head is spinning a little.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, still catching his breath.

“And no, Ryan, I don’t control the storm. The storm is chaos; it’s the drop of water on Ellie’s hand but multiplied by a billion. You don’t control chaos. I just moved the storm _here_.”

Well there’s Ryan’s heroic self-sabotage theory out the window.

“I moved it from Chicago, by the way", Shane adds on, like an afterthought. “Great city, maybe my favorite in the country, but visit in the spring or fall. The winters are brutal and the summers are boiling, and also likely to drop a thunderstorm on you.”

A streak of lightning shoots past the darkened window, and the wind howls.

Shane claps his hands together.

“Enough travel recommendations,” Shane says. “Take your turn.”

Ryan doesn’t. He’s thinking.

“ _Why_ did you bring the storm here, though?” Ryan wonders aloud—and wondering in his head and wondering aloud are basically the same around Shane. He has no privacy anyway. At least this way, Ryan can pull his thoughts into some kind of order.

Ryan still doesn’t move.

“I mean, it’s very atmospheric, don’t get me wrong, very climactic for the final battle," Ryan says. "But not only can you not control it; it literally just sabotaged you as you were about to win. That was a one-in-a-million shot, a perfect opportunity, and what are the chances that the thunder would shake the table at just at the right time?”

“Ryan,” Shane says, his voice dark, warning. “ _Take. Your. Turn_.” 

Ryan doesn’t. He’s almost there, he can feel it—he’s right on the edge of it. He closes his eyes.

The image of Shane is still there, on the inside of his eyelids, memories of just minutes ago, like flashbulb impressions. The way Shane plays pool with his whole body, angles his already-angular body into each shot, the way it’s almost dance-like, the long clean lines of his arms and his back as he takes aim. During one of Shane’s slow, considered shots, before Ryan realized that shooting randomly was not the way to win, a bolt of lightning shot past the window and hit the sand not 100 feet outside. For a fraction of a second, it was framed perfectly in the crook of Shane’s arm. It’s was a one-in-a-thousand chance, maybe more, but it looked intentional, like Shane had planned it for a photograph.

Shane looks like art, but also chaos.

Shane looks like he’s part of the storm.

_That’s it._

“You’re using chaos magic,” Ryan says, realizing. “The storm is powering your magic and your magic is—” Ryan’s less sure on this one, it’s a gamble, he’s got to watch Shane’s face. “—is probability manipulation.”

The subtle way Shane’s features freeze is enough to tell Ryan that he’s right. He wouldn’t have been able to make that call, two hours ago—one perk of his inability to stop staring at Shane’s face, apparently.

Ryan can also see that Shane’s face has now gone dangerous.

“I swear, Ryan, if you don’t take your turn in the next sixty seconds, I’m calling this a default.”

But Ryan just keeps talking. He can’t seem to stop.

“Not every shot, that would be too obvious; you’re too good of a hustler for that. But the really tricky ones, you’re juiced up for those.” Ryan laughs. “So not only can you read my mind, not only can you predict my every move, you were also going to make absolutely certain your counter-moves were perfect. God, Shane, you _really_ wanted to eat my soul. But what you do comes back around, and chaos fucked you right back.”

Shane looks livid. It’s not an expression Ryan’s ever seen on his face before. Ryan wants to laugh at him, and then lick the furrows from his brow.

“And what are you going to do about it, Ryan?” Shane asks.

Ryan smiles. He hopes the shark grin he gives Shane reminds him of his own.

“I’m going to do it better than you, _Shan_.”

And the crescent moon tattoos on the backs of Ryan’s hands begin to glow.

*****

_“I’m going to do it better than you, Shan,”_ Ryan says, and Shane-called-Shax-called-Shan by Lucifer himself, freezes for a moment. He should call the default. He should raise a counter-spell. He should do _something_ , but all he can do is stare down at this witch’s face—his big brown eyes, the cut of his jaw—and think, _Oh shit_.

Because he knows what’s coming. The only way a mortal’s going to do chaos magic better than a demon is to do it _through_ a demon, using him as a conduit, binding him. Which Ryan can do. Because the storm is a powerful enough wellspring that, if Ryan can channel it, he’ll be able to bind Shane easily. Because the chaos magic, volatile and capricious as the storm itself, doesn’t seem to want to help Shane out anymore. Because Ryan knows his name.

Ryan closes his hands into fists, brings them up to his face, crossed at the wrist. The crescent moons frame his face like parentheses, shining like beacons in the dark bar. Ryan’s somehow got ahold of the athame again, clenched in his right fist, and the double-edged blade is pointing away from his face, glinting in the blue light coming off his tattoos.

Ryan is chanting.

“ _Vescaram Anta Intacurum, Vescalis Dissendis Divinitum. Ex Tutum Tatum, Dimentum Talos. Dox Toxem, Dox Malum. Dox Divinitum. **Shane. Shan. Shax.** ”_

Shane feels his knees lock up, feels his muscles go stiff.

_“Singuinata Venet a Superem **Shane. Shan. Shax."**_

Ryan’s tattoos are still glowing, and now they’re pointed directly at Shane. In the dark, the beam of light looks almost solid where it hits his chest.

_“Phasmatos Tribum Melan Veras Raddiam Onu Pavadus Ponemus. **Shane. Shan. Shax.** "_

Shane feels that blue light inside of him, reaching out through him, through the core of himself where his own magic lies, out the window, to the storm. Ryan’s power is everywhere inside him—almost like he swallowed his soul after all.

 _But better maybe, because this Ryan is alive, so alive, so powerful; and Shane can feel that life and power coursing through the very core of him_.

“ _Vescaram Anta Intacurum, Vescalis Dissendis Divinitum. **Shane. Shan. Shax.** ”_

It’s not a sure thing though—that Ryan will be able to channel the thunderstorm. Ryan’s a hedgewitch from the desert—he’s channeled blinding sun and blistering heat, all manner of wind and dust storm, but it’s no sure thing that he’ll be able to channel lightning. More than one witch has died trying to channel lightning.

Ryan’s chanting is growing louder.

_“SINGUINATA VENETA SUPEREM! SINGUINATA VENET A SUPEREM!"_

The beam of blue light is veering now, like Ryan’s trying to keep ahold of it, like he’s trying to fly a kite in a thunderstorm. Shane can see the sweat on Ryan's brow, and the tiniest trickle of blood from his nose.

This is it, then. This is the moment that Ryan either channels the storm through his body, or the lightning finds its own path of least resistance. Shane’s immortal; he’d be okay, but losing control right now would certainly kill Ryan. And if Shane can’t even eat Ryan’s soul, then he certainly doesn’t want _that_ to happen.

_“SINGUINATA VENET A SUPEREM! SINGUINATA VENET A SUPEREM!"_

And Shane feels the exact moment that Ryan catches the lightning.

The beam of light goes still and taught, like he’s caught a shark on the end of his fishing wire. But there’s energy flowing through that wire, the chaos of the storm, and Shane feels it churning in his insides. He feels the energy pass through his body, feels it pull along some of his own.

He feels a piece of himself, his body, his chaos, the storm’s, leave his body, and then, still tethered to Ryan by the light, he feels them mix together as they pass into Ryan.

And Ryan’s eyes go black.

It’s the sexiest thing Shane has ever seen in his life.

 _“Phasmatos Tribum Melan Veras Raddiam Onu Pavadus Ponemus,”_ Ryan whispers, softer now.

Now the beams of light draw back from the clouds, back in through the window like twin telescopes collapsing back into Ryan’s hands. They pass through Shane’s body once more on their way back to Ryan’s, and when they do, Shane notices his cock is hard.

He wonders if his own eyes are still black, or if Ryan’s taken that from him, too. He doesn’t exactly have a mirror, and he can’t exactly ask Ryan right now.

“They’re brown,” Ryan says, and he _grins._

_Oh SHIT._

“I think you were saying I should take my turn?” Ryan says, calmly, innocently, like he doesn’t have the full chaos of a lightning storm and half of Shane’s own magic flowing through him right now. Shane’s shocked that Ryan can sound so calm. He’s just a man. He wonders how long he can hold it all inside himself without exploding.

Shane looks down at Ryan’s crotch, because it’s not like he’s got much dignity left to lose at this point, and he notices that Ryan is also hard.

“Go for it,” Shane says weakly.

Ryan does. The only striped ball left on the table is the yellow nine. The 8-ball sits on the opposite side of the table. Shane scratched on his disastrous last turn, a thousand years ago now, so Ryan can put the cue ball wherever he wants. With just the right speed, just the right pressure, just the right angle, Ryan can sink the 9-ball first, and the 8-ball just a second later.

Thunder rumbles, almost as if the storm, too, is waiting in anticipation.

Ryan places the cue ball down and—yep, that’s the right spot. Of course it is. He takes aim.

He closes his eyes, and in that small part of Shane that’s now bound both to Ryan and to the storm, he feels Ryan charge the probability spell with chaos magic.

Even the wind is silent, now, like it’s holding its breath. Waiting for Ryan to move. Waiting for Ryan to cast.

“ _Abracadabra_ ,” Ryan says, and shoots.

The cue-ball banks just right off the rail, hits the striped nine-ball with just enough spin. The nine-ball hits the eight-ball with just the right angle that both balls bank off each other in different directions. The nine ball’s headed straight for the corner pocket; the eight ball’s straight headed for the center one. If Ryan’s timing isn’t _exactly_ perfect, if the friction on the table is just slightly off, a spilled beer in the wrong place a year ago, a speck of dust that didn’t get cleaned—the 8-ball will sink before the 9-ball. That’s an automatic loss. And wouldn’t that be something. After all that, the channeling and the binding, if Ryan’s a little off in his timing and Shane still gets to eat his soul.

But the storm likes Ryan better.

The striped 9-ball sinks first. The 8-ball follows a second later.

And the storm breaks.

The clouds vanish back up into the sky, heading back to where they came from, a thousand miles away, over Lake Michigan. Chicago gets its summer thunderstorm back, and the Mojave’s back to desert.

A bird chirps. Shane’s not sure quite what time it is—it’s still dark out, but it feels like it’s past the witching hour.

It’ll be dawn soon.

“I won,” Ryan whispers. His eyes are brown again.

He’s staring into space. Shane can feel the chaos-energy slowly leaking out of him like it’s evaporating in the desert heat, as it follows the storm back to Chicago.

Ryan’s still pretty juiced up on chaos though—enough that Shane himself is definitely still bound.

“You won,” Shane agrees. As fair and as square as it gets in these kinds of demon deals, and Shane’s are always fair, because he hates liars. And Ryan is many things—so many, an incredibly powerful witch, the leader of a coven, _a small business owner_ , dachshund aficionado, Lakers fan, Paddington devotee—but a liar isn’t one of them.

“ _Well_ ,” Ryan says.

Shane’s not sure when Ryan moved in quite so close. Shane’s feeling a little off-balance, to be honest. Ryan’s moved so close, and he’s looking straight up at Shane now, cornering Shane with his back against the short rail of the pool table.

“ _Well_ ,” Ryan says again, and Shane recognizes the lascivious tone of Ryan’s voice from his own. He wonders how much of himself is still in Ryan, right now.

“Oh, you’re not gonna have to wonder much longer, _big guy_ ,” Ryan says. “You’re about to know _exactly_ how much of you is in me.”

And Ryan _cackles_.

*****


	4. Chapter 4

*****

This chaos energy shit is _amazing_.

Initially it was terrifying. He didn’t know if he’d taken too much of the storm or too much of Shane, but when Ryan went to take his final turn, he felt stuffed to the gills in a very strange way. Like he’d eaten the biggest meal of his life, and then that meal had turned into _bees_ inside of him. Like he was in literal, imminent danger of exploding.

But once he used up enough energy in the casting, once he’d _won_ , Ryan started feeling absolutely incredible.

He feels like he could run a marathon. He feels like he could cast and cast, over and over, an endless stream of magic. He feels like he could fuck for hours.

Some of this might just be the residual endorphins of his victory, and the sheer, wild _joy_ of finally knocking Shane down a peg.

“So I hear you’re gonna give me what I want most in the whole world, right now,” Ryan says—he’s crowding Shane up into the pool table, and he’s trying to sound casual, but he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet a little. “Why don’t you uh. Read my mind and see what that is, big guy.”

“ _I can’t_ ,” Shane says, through gritted teeth. “You _know_ I can’t, because _you_ have that, right now.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Ryan sighs, dreamily. Shane’s face looks alternately abashed and angry, but Ryan can feel his mind. The two primary emotions in there are _humiliation_ and _lust_ , and those are inextricably tangled together, up there in that over-sized cranium. Apparently getting both literally and colloquially _owned_ by a mortal makes Shane embarrassed-horny.

And isn’t that _just so great_.

“I’ll tell you what I want, then,” Ryan says. “My prize for winning, what I want most in the whole wide world.”

He looks up at Shane through his eyelashes.

“Bend down here,” Ryan says. “I’ll whisper it.”

Shane does, leans his head down to Ryan’s level, so that Ryan can whisper in his ear.

And Ryan whispers it, that _one thing_ he wants most in the entire world, right this very minute.

Shane blinks.

Shane pulls his head back up, but not before Ryan gets in a little nip at his earlobe on the way out.

Shane blinks again, deer in the headlights for a moment, but then he smiles. A bit of the old swagger comes back to his features.

“Well,” Shane says, staring off into the middle-distance. “This whole deal seems like it’s turning out to be a very… _win-win situation_ for me after all.”

He looks down at Ryan again, though, like he wants to double check. Like he’s _unsure_.

 _Aww_.

“You sure about that?” Shane asks. “You don’t want, like, wealth or power or something?”

Ryan shrugs.

“What do I need wealth out here for?” Ryan asks. “And power-wise, I’d say I’m doing okay for myself, wouldn’t you?”

 _I certainly would,_ Ryan hears Shane think. _And I’m reminded again of what a good demon you would make._

Ryan decides to table that thought for the time being.

Ryan’s stopped leaking chaos-energy now—actually, he seems to be holding onto some of it. And while the binding of Shane’s demonic magic to Ryan’s isn’t as all-encompassing as it was a few minutes ago, it’s definitely still there.

Maybe Ryan can…stay bound to Shane?

He’d like that.

He’d like that _a lot_.

There are mixed emotions on that notion coming from Shane, Ryan notes. However, by far the predominant emotion coming off of Shane right now is _horny-on-main._

Well. Mustn’t keep a demon waiting.

Shane’s still got his back to the pool table, and now Ryan’s stepping forward into Shane’s space, so that Shane has to take a step back. There’s no room to step back, though, and Shane’s ass hits the lip of the pool table.

Ryan grins.

“Really, Ryan? Right here?” Shane asks. “Don’t you have a bed or a couch or something?” His tone is irritated, but Ryan doesn’t even need Shane’s psychic powers to know Shane’s persnickety complaints are all for show.

“Definitely right here,” Ryan says. “You think I’m letting you out of the ring of fire before I get my wish?”

Shane glances up at the ring of fire, still flickering above them, and lets out a put-upon sigh, but Ryan can feel how _not-upset_ about it he really is.

Shane is tall enough that he can just sit right down on the pool table’s rim. He sits, then closes his eyes for a moment, like he’s taking stock of himself, and then—

“I do have another party trick,” Shane says.

Shane smirks.

Shane snaps his fingers again.

And then Shane dematerializes their clothes.

And suddenly, Ryan’s struggling to cope with a lap full of almost six and a half feet of naked demon.

_Um._

So very _very_ much pale skin on display, right now. Ryan’s eyes scan down over Shane’s body, his broad chest, his prominent sternum, scan down the light dusting of hair over his chest, heavier an inch or so under his belly-button, trailing _down_ ….

Ryan blinks.

“Now that _is_ a neat trick,” Ryan breathes.

A second later, Shane materializes a bottle of lube right where the rack of billiards usually sits, and that wicked little smirk is now a straight up evil smile—and it’s weirdly _good_ to see Shane smile like that, to see him getting back to his affably evil self again.

So good, in fact, that Ryan drags Shane down to kiss him.

The kiss that sealed their deal, before the pool game, was the best kiss of Ryan’s life.

This kiss is even better.

The moment that Ryan’s lips meet Shane’s, Ryan feels the energy inside him moving again. The parts of Shane’s energy that are still inside him recognize their rightful home, and Ryan feels them fluttering in his chest. He breathes them out, and Shane breathes them back in; he tastes them on his tongue, and Shane licks them out of his mouth. And the reverse, from the other side, Ryan’s own energy passes back from where it mixed into Shane—and how funny that some tiny fragments of Ryan’s soul _did_ end up inside Shane in the end, and now Shane is giving them back.

A few fragments of Shane, though, seem to have nestled deep. They seem to be staying.

The binding, Ryan notes, is also still intact. 

“Shut up, Ryan,” Shane says, pulling away just long enough to read Ryan’s thoughts once more. Damn, that was handy; Ryan would’ve liked to hold on to that.

Ryan can’t feel disappointed for too long though, because Shane is tangling long fingers into Ryan’s hair and gripping hard enough to pull, and Ryan’s going with him, bearing them both down onto the surface of the pool table.

There’s no graceful way to get from the edge of the pool table over to the center, but at this point, after everything that’s led up to this, a clumsy scramble is hardly going to stop them in their tracks. It’s a mix of sensations—the green felt is a little scratchy under Ryan’s exposed knee (and he can only imagine how it must feel against Shane’s _naked ass_ , _ha ha, sucks._ ) But every now and then, in the general wriggling and scooching it takes to center their bodies, Ryan’s cock drags along Shane’s pale, cool skin, or the head of Shane’s cock leaks against Ryan’s belly, and as he pulls away, a slightly sticky trail of precum trails behind.

They finally meet in the middle, with Shane flat on his back. Ryan’s legs straddle Shane’s, but he’s got his upper body low enough that they can still kiss, that Shane can still wind his fingers through Ryan’s hair and _yank_ a little.

Their cocks are pressed together in the center, and they’re both leaking steadily against each other. Shane— _what a forward-thinking demon, really takes initiative_ —removes a hand from Ryan’s hair and reaches down, gathers the truly copious amount of precum leaking from the head of his own dick, and takes them both, together, in his hand, and it feels _so good, right away_ that Ryan has to tear himself away from their kiss, sit up, look down.

Ryan’s brain shorts out.

When the whole forming-coherent-thoughts part of Ryan’s mind reboots, a minute later, Shane’s still got his hand wrapped around them, rocking his hips slightly as Ryan’s hips, seemingly without any conscious input from Ryan’s brain, rock back. Ryan’s mesmerized at the sight of the head of his dick disappearing into Shane’s hand as it rubs up against Shane’s own cock—which, notably, does _not_ disappear into his hand so easily.

God. It is a _vision in contrast_. 

Ryan knows a lot of teenage-boy witches get into serious trouble when they start pondering dick size too deeply—a young exuberant magic-user who goes looking for a couple extra inches below the belt is likely to end up hexing their own genitalia. Ryan personally never felt the need— _motion of the ocean_ and all that—and he sure hadn’t gotten a lot of complaints over the years, irrespective of his average endowment.

However.

There is something to be said for the way that Shane’s giant hand wraps all the way around Ryan’s dick with room to spare. Also something to be said for the way Shane can hold both of them, in his hand.

And truly, not enough in the world can be said for the way Shane’s massive cock dwarfs Ryan’s. It’s the best thing Ryan’s ever seen in his life.

“Size queen,” Shane says lowly, from beneath him. Then he twists his wrist just right, and Ryan can’t hold himself upright anymore, has to fall forward so he can moan into Shane’s mouth. 

They’re really getting into it now, hips rutting against each other, kissing fast and dirty. Shane’s still jerking them off together as they rock, and Ryan doesn’t even know why Shane brought the lube out of the ether, because the precum that’s leaking steadily from both of them is more than enough.

 _This_ is more than enough, Ryan realizes abruptly. He’s getting close already, pleasure already climbing; he’s starting to feel that warm tightness in his pelvic floor that heralds the beginning of the final buildup to his orgasm, and rubbing off against Shane is great— _really_ great— but this isn’t how he wants to get there.

“ _Stopstopstop_ ,” Ryan hisses, and bats Shane’s hand away. Shane pulls back immediately, but he looks very pleased with himself when he smiles up at Ryan.

“Need a minute?” Shane asks, voice all arrogance. Well. It’s earned arrogance, at least in this instance.

Ryan sits back up, still straddling Shane, but shifts a little farther down on his thighs. Ryan breathes through his nose and conjugates Latin verbs in his head until he’s drawn himself back from the brink

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan says testily, when he can talk again. “You know what I asked for. _The thing you want most in the entire world,_ you say, and I ask for something so _imminently attainable_ —and you can’t even give me _that_.”

Ryan’s gaze is drawn back to Shane’s cock, and it’s still more than imposing enough without Ryan’s nearby for contrast.

“Oh,” Shane says airily. “I think you’ll find I can give it to you.”

Shane raises an eyebrow and grins like a shark

“And if not,” Shane goes on, all teeth, “you can _take it_ from me. That’s what you really want anyway, isn’t it.”

The look in Shane’s eyes is very knowing.

He’s not wrong.

Because Ryan, when given all the power and all the wishes in the world, simply asked to _ride Shane’s cock until he cried._

“You ready?” Shane asks, grabbing the lube off the table.

Ryan blinks at him in disbelief.

Is he…is he _serious_?

“Uh, _no_ I’m not ready,” Ryan says, sharply. “Have you seen your dick? Hell, have you seen your _fingers_?”

Shane’s laughing when Ryan snatches the little container of lube back from him, but Shane lets him have it.

“You can _watch_ for a little bit,” Ryan grouses. “No touching.”

Ryan’s not as close to going over the edge as he was when he and Shane were grinding against each other, but he’s not going to take any chances. Not when Ryan wants to get to the main event _quite this very much_.

“Can I touch _myself_?” Shane asks, and—oh, _really_ , big bad Great Marquis of Hell is asking for _Ryan’s_ permission to touch his own cock now?

Ryan _likes_ that.

“ _Sure,”_ Ryan says, magnanimously, just to rub it in that Shane even thought to ask.

Shane’s pale enough that Ryan can see a light pink blush streak down his chest. His cock, though, is bigger, redder, and harder than ever. Ryan wonders, almost scientifically, how much of Shane’s blood is down there. He wonders if Shane ever gets dizzy.

“I don’t,” Shane shoots back. “Other people do, though,” he says, and then he leers at Ryan in case there’s any confusion that Shane’s talking about the people he’s fucking.

 _God_. Ryan could get used to this, this back-and-forth, this give-and-take. The struggle to gain the upper hand is a lot more fun in _this_ context than it was when Ryan’s life was on the line. More fun, and also turning him on like nothing else on earth.

Ryan pops the lid off the little container of lube. He pauses, thinks for a minute, and then squirts a generous amount onto the little divot on the left side of Shane’s lower abdomen, the little concave surface between his happy trail and the crest of his hip bone.

“Cold!” Shane yelps out.

“ _Whiny,_ ” Ryan hisses right back in his face.

Ryan slicks up his fingers and reaches back.

Shane’s right—the lube _is_ a little cold; apparently whatever ether Shane grabbed it from was a bit on the chilly side—but it helps take the edge off as Ryan opens himself up efficiently: one finger, then two, then three, business-like, systematic, a means to an end.

Shane’s face transforms, though, as Ryan moves, staring glazed and open-mouthed like Ryan’s perfunctory little fingering is the most erotic thing he’s ever seen in his life.

Well. Ryan is only so strong. And in his defense, Shane _was_ , very recently, trying to kill him.

Ryan starts riding his own hand, just a little. Just to be mean.

Shane’s hand _flies_ to his cock and it pulses in his fist like he can’t help himself, so Ryan presses his other hand to Shane’s lower abdomen, right above his pelvis. For leverage. And also, a little bit, for revenge.

Shane squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, and then looks away from Ryan’s face like it’s too much, panting and staring up into the ring of fire above them.

“Need a minute?” Ryan asks, still riding his hand, because two can play that game.

“You—” is all Shane can get out for a minute, through gritted teeth, and with that tone of voice Ryan thinks it’s a curse he’s trying to get out, thinks it’s an insult, so he’s surprised when Shane takes a steadying breath in and says—

“You look so good on top of me.”

And Shane lubes up his own hand with the leftover supply on his belly, starts stroking his own cock and moaning like it’s just the way he likes it, and he’s just watching Ryan ride three of his own fingers like it’s the greatest show on earth, and Ryan is watching him watch, and suddenly Ryan’s fingers are just _not enough_.

Ryan grabs Shane’s wrist where it’s moving over his own dick, and meets Shane’s eyes. When Ryan pulls Shane’s hand behind him, Shane follows, sitting up again to reach around, reach _under_.

With Shane sitting upright like this, Ryan’s basically in his lap again. It’s probably a disadvantage in the tug-of-war they’re playing, but Ryan can’t be all that bothered because it also means that Shane is close enough to kiss.

Ryan’s free hand comes up to Shane’s face, and he tilts it down to his. They’re still kissing when Ryan first feels the cool press of Shane’s lubed finger to his stretched hole.

_What a good demon._

Shane’s finger traces teasingly around Ryan’s rim, right where Ryan’s own fingers spread it open, and the foreign touch there is so good that Ryan wants to die.

“Your hands,” Ryan blurts out, without even meaning to, and of course Shane snaps on the advantage.

“What about my hands, baby?” Shane murmurs into his mouth. “Tell me about my hands.”

Shane strokes around Ryan’s rim again, again, and Ryan feels his thighs starting to twitch.

“So fucking conceited,” Ryan grits out, “you know all about your hands.”

“Mm, do I?” Shane says, and his index finger continues its soft, arrhythmic little strokes around Ryan’s rim. Ryan’s hole twitches, and he has to press his face into Shane’s neck. He twitches again, and he knows Shane definitely feels it, because Ryan can feel the shudder that runs through him.

“Tell me about my hands, Ryan,” Shane says again, and Ryan doesn’t miss that Shane sounds a little desperate, now. “Tell me what’s so good about them that they’re worth your soul, that they’re worth your life, that they’re worth spending your wish on _begging me to fuck you_.”

“Fuck you,” Ryan hisses, because he knows once he starts babbling out everything that’s been running through his mind all night, he won’t be able to stop; he tries to suck hickies into Shane’s throat to distract himself but even now he can’t stop the words from spilling out against Shane’s clavicle—“Love your hands. Your long fingers. Pretty nails. Watched you—” he gasps, Shane’s stroking faster now, right where he’s so stretched, so sensitive, and it goes straight to his cock—“watched you hold the pool cue, you looked so fucking good, I wanted your fingers inside of me. Want them inside of me.”

“What’s the magic word?” Shane asks, because he’s predictable.

Well.

Ryan isn’t.

Ryan grins into Shane’s neck.

“ _Abracadabra_ ,” Ryan says, and _bites_.

And as he bites, he pulls on their binding energy, just hard enough that the tip of Shane’s index finger slips inside of him, as if pulled by a string.

“ _Fuck,”_ they both say but Ryan’s too preoccupied with the stretch, the amazing burn, the sensation that’s just-this-side-of-too-much to wonder if it’s the binding energy that makes them curse together.

Shane smashes his mouth to Ryan’s, a bruising kiss that’s wet and messy-dirty, all spit and clacking teeth and Ryan writhing in his lap.

“You would make—” Shane grits out, finger quarter-inching forward slowly, so slowly, “ _the best_ fucking demon Ryan. Oh my _god_.”

Ryan opens his mouth to object, but Shane’s finger slips in that final quarter inch and it shoves Ryan’s own hand against his prostate, so Ryan can’t be held accountable for the garbled nonsense that comes out of his mouth; it cannot be used against him in courts either mortal or infernal.

Instead, he just hooks his free arm around Shane’s shoulders, presses his face into Shane’s throat and hangs on for the ride.

Shane’s thoroughly finger-fucking him now, and it’s just his index finger but it feels like _so much_ with Ryan’s three fingers already inside, the burn, the stretch. Ryan’s trying to shield his prostate from over-stimulation with his own hand but Shane is fucking _evil_ , and brings his other hand around to stroke Ryan’s perineum.

It’s way too much and not enough—Ryan’s cock is leaking steadily between their bodies and he can’t _breathe_ ; Shane’s hitting his prostate from the outside _and_ the inside, and Ryan can hear himself whimpering into Shane’s neck like he’s hearing it from outside his own body.

It’s too good. Shane’s fingering him hard enough that Ryan's bouncing a little in his lap, and the stretch of their fingers together is so sharp and present, and it’s all _so close_ to what Ryan really wants but not quite close enough.

But with the sparks of pleasure shooting through his body, he can’t articulate himself well enough to get from _Point A_ to _Point B,_ so Shane takes the lead for a little bit, slows it down, even as Ryan whimpers and rocks and whines.

“You ready for me now, Ryan?” Shane asks softly.

Shane’s hand comes to a stop and he shifts his finger just a hairbreadth, just to push against Ryan’s prostate and make him gasp.

“I think you’re ready,” Shane says.

Ryan breathes for a moment, and as Shane’s finger pulls back, he gradually remembers a few crucial details like who he is and where he is and which way is up. He looks down at Shane’s cock, squeezes around the four fingers currently in his ass, does some quick and optimistic mental math.

He’s probably ready. Hopefully.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, breathless. “Yeah, I’m ready. Lay back down.”

Ryan doesn’t have to use the binding to push Shane backwards; he just goes, gently withdrawing his finger from Ryan on the way. Gingerly, Ryan does the same, and feels the odd sensation of his stretched hole fluttering and grasping around nothing.

Shane’s lubing up his dick again, watching Ryan, smiling and jerking off lackadaisically like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and the sight is so much that it makes Ryan go a little philosophical.

Because Ryan has many cares, in the world.

Ryan has _too many—_ he cares about everything _so much_ , tries at everything so hard; he cares so much about this bar, about his staff, about his magic and their magic all wound up into each other. He cares about keeping his friends safe. He cares how well the Lakers are doing this season, and whether or not there’ll be a Paddington 3. Ryan’s mentor often told him not to care about everything and everyone so much, that it was just setting him up for loss, for failure. Well, see where that got him.

Ryan cares, and somehow, the culmination of all those cares and worries and fears, of his trying harder and grinding longer than anybody else—all of that has led him to _this_.

Yesterday, before he met Shane, he would’ve said that this was stupid. Foolhardy. A waste of a life to make a deal, a waste of a wish to spend it on this. But since then, he’s kissed a demon. He’s swallowed the chaos of a thunderstorm and turned it into magic. He’s fought that demon, bound him, _won_.

And now that demon is lying spread out on the pool table where Ryan beat him at his own game. That demon is staring up at Ryan like he’s the only thing in the universe. And Ryan can’t think of a single thing that he would wish for, other than this.

This is it then.

This is the thing he wants more than anything else in the world.

_Hope it’s worth it._

“It will be,” Shane says.

Shane pulls his hand away from his own cock, and gently rests his hands on Ryan’s hips.

Well. Here goes a whole lot more than nothing. 

Ryan grabs Shane’s cock _(and it looks even larger in his own hand than it did in Shane’s, Jesus.)_ He scoots up Shane’s thighs; he positions himself over it. The blunt tip against his open hole is like nothing he’s ever felt before and for a moment he’s sure it won’t fit, but then Shane’s gently pressing down on Ryan’s hips and Ryan’s bearing down, relaxing, and the head of Shane’s cock slides inside, and—

_Oh._

_My._

_God._

Shane’s cock is hot and hard and huge and it feels like it’s ripping him in half—and this is just the _head_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shane curses underneath him. “ _Fuck,_ Ryan, you feel so good, I knew—” but Ryan is beyond listening. Beyond speech.

The stretch is insane. The burn is just the right side of painful—it _is_ painful, Ryan realizes, it just hurts in a good sort of way, and doesn’t that just seem _right._

There’s a corner of Ryan’s brain that’s watching from outside himself, while the majority of Ryan’s brain is occupied with thoughts like _full,_ and _stretch_ , and _take it_. That singular logical corner of his mind is glad that Ryan hasn’t been skipping leg day, because it takes the full strength of his thighs to lower himself, quarter-inch by quarter-inch, down Shane’s cock, shaking and moaning all the way.

Beneath him, Shane’s not faring much better. He’s grinding his teeth; he’s taken his hands off Ryan’s hips to pull at his own hair; his face is turning red; and Ryan regains just enough coherency that he decides to bounce a little, just where he is, just on the top half of Shane’s cock.

Apparently, Shane likes that.

“ _Fuck Ryan, so hot and tight, you’re perfect you’re so perfect let me keep you let me fuck you let me keep you—”_

“Can’t fuck me yet,” Ryan breathes, because he’s still got _several_ inches of cock to slide down, thank you. Shane looks so desperate, though, that Ryan can’t resist adding a little taunt to his voice.

“Gotta stay still til I say, Shane.”

Ryan swivels his hips in a tight little circle and finds the angle that presses Shane’s cock directly up against his prostate and he _screams_ , but Shane screams too, and there’s a vein pulsating in Shane’s temple now.

“ _Fuck Ryan it’s too much you’re too much I can’t keep still you have to hold me down use the binding hold me down **hold me down**._”

Shit, _OKAY_.

Ryan presses his palm to Shane’s chest and summons the binding energy. It’s so easy, now. A warmth spreads outward, from the center of his palm, and Shane quiets, calms, the pain in his face easing—but it’s so strange. Ryan feels the warmth in his own palm, but he also feels the warmth spreading through Shane’s chest, as if his nerve-endings extend out a little farther than they should, out of Ryan’s body, through the binding, into Shane’s. That warmth in his chest—in _Shane’s_ chest, rather—is soothing, comforting, and it eases the stretch as Ryan starts to slide the rest of the way down.

Shane whimpers, and Ryan feels his cock twitch inside of him.

— _down he’s holding me down he feels so good so strong so tight I can’t move I_ —

Ryan stops. He holds himself up, thighs shaking, his ass now just a fraction of an inch from Shane’s body.

— _stopped why did he stop this is torture he’s a demon he’s so good it hurts_ —

“Shane,” Ryan says softly. It’s a herculean effort to form words. To form thoughts.

_Shane’s mind is cloudy, foggy with pleasure, but somewhere, far in the distance, is Ryan’s voice._

“Shane,” Ryan repeats.

_Hm? Through the fog, Shane can feel Ryan’s confusion, his interest, his desire._

“Shane,” Ryan says a third time. “Am I hearing your thoughts? Am I in your head?”

 _Can’t...talk...now_ , Shane thinks, and moans, and writhes, and Ryan feels the effort it’s taking him to even think clearly enough to say this much. Think this much.

But then Ryan finally _finally_ finishes his long, slow descent down Shane’s cock, and all coherent thought leaves his mind, replaced with the overpowering sensation of being _filled._ His mind is too full of cotton and cock to hold onto the spell anymore and he feels the binding _twang_ as it snaps back, stops holding Shane down.

Freed, Shane arches, and Ryan screams.

It feels like Shane’s cock is in his stomach.

Ryan shoves Shane back down, both hands on his chest for leverage, and starts riding, and Shane keeps arching, grinding, but he’s letting Ryan set the pace, letting Ryan wring the pleasure from his body. Ryan finds the perfect angle, the one that nudges the head of Shane’s cock against his prostate every time, and he starts to lose the plot a little.

Ryan lifts up, drops down, and Shane burns inside of him. It’s the best pain he’s ever felt.

 _Best_ , Shane agrees, and his words are all heat and brimstone, like a smoldering hearth, like hot coals. _Love feeling you feel, how good you feel_ , _love making you feel good, Ryan, **Ryan**. _

At the same time, Ryan hears Shane moaning, wordlessly, and he realizes Shane isn’t speaking out loud. The realization goes straight to his cock.

It’s not the same as having Shane’s full psychic abilities—he’s mostly getting flashes, impressions of what Shane’s feeling, occasionally mirror reflections of what Ryan’s feeling directed back at him, all dripping in the pleasure Shane takes in making him feel _so good_.

But every now and then, Shane thinks loudly enough that Ryan can hear the whole thing.

 _Want you to use me_.

Ryan’s so surprised he almost stops moving— _almost_ stops, but fortunately his body’s on autopilot, rutting on pure instinct, and he couldn’t stop his hips from rocking if he tried. Still. Knock him over with a feather, as they say.

 _Want you to use me_ , Shane thinks again, louder. _Use me, ride me, make yourself come you’re so powerful you’re so beautiful I want you to come all over me, Ryan, take what you need, **Ryan!**_

Shane’s next moan is almost a sob, and Ryan feels himself moving faster, faster, clenching, shifting, fucking himself raw on Shane’s cock, but it’s still not _enough_ — not fast enough, not hard enough, and Shane must hear his thoughts, or else he must also just need more himself because he _grabs_ Ryan’s hips hard enough to bruise, grinds his own hips into Ryan’s as hard as he can, and it’s not _still not enough_. Ryan needs Shane closer than this, closer than sex, closer than their minds pressed against each other—Ryan needs Shane inside him entirely, and now Ryan understands _exactly_ the feeling Shane was craving when he wanted to swallow Ryan’s soul. 

The binding that connects them is a hot white line of energy and Ryan feel it pulsating under his hands, under his ass, at every place their bodies join. He can also feel Shane’s mind, wordless, desperate, and every voiceless feeling in him is begging Ryan to pull it.

_Pull the binding, Ryan, please. Pull it, Ryan, you’re so strong. Please._

_I want to see what happens_.

Ryan throws his head back, gasping, looks straight up into the ring of fire.

Ryan _pulls_.

And Shane levitates straight off the pool table.

Shane’s eyes, squeezed shut in ecstasy, fly open then.

“Holy _shit,_ Ryan!” Shane says, aloud, but Ryan can’t respond because defying gravity is grinding Shane’s cock even further up inside of him and he’s in real danger of actually starting to cry.

There are tears in his eyes.

 _They’re fucking floating_.

“We are _fucking floating_ ,” Shane says, breathless, delirious; he’s suddenly the more coherent of the two, though likely only for the time being. “In that we are fucking. And also, we are floating.”

The binding energy is all around them, extending out from all the places where their bodies join. The energy wraps around both their bodies; it shoots out like sparks of lightning to mingle with the ring of fire that encircles them. They’re twisted around each other, braided together, the red-orange of the ring of fire, and the electric white of the binding energy, a circle of magic all around.

And Ryan can feel their _minds_ intertwining, now, just the same as the threads of magic.

Ryan can see himself through Shane’s eyes, head thrown back, riding Shane’s hips like his life depends on it. He sees Shane looking back through Ryan’s own eyes, sees Shane watching himself moan and thrust and writhe in desperation, laws of physics forgotten as he floats in the air and pushes against nothing to grind as deeply as he can into Ryan’s ass.

Ryan feels the relentless pressure of Shane’s massive cock against his prostate, but he also feels what Shane is feeling—the wet, tight heat of Ryan all around him, squeezing him, riding him, stripping him of everything he has. Ryan feels his own incoherent arousal, the exhilaration of _so much magic_ , the thrill of victory and the thrill of just _demolishing_ Shane underneath him and being destroyed right back in return. And Ryan also feels Shane’s attraction mirrored right back, as strong and clear as his own, and God, Ryan could drown in the eroticism of Shane's acceptance of submission; Shane's so thrilled to be brought low, so turned on at being humbled just this once. 

Ryan can see through Shane's eyes. Shane can see through Ryan's. And when Shane closes his own eyes, overwhelmed, Ryan knows that all he can see is what Ryan sees—himself, utterly and completely at Ryan's mercy. Ryan has never felt more powerful.

_Want you to take everything from me, Ryan. You beat me before, and you can beat me again, take it all away and leave me with nothing, take it, **take it** —_

There’s a warm pressure building in Ryan’s core, reflected back in Shane’s, and he can’t tell if it’s the binding energy or his impending orgasm or Shane’s, or maybe it’s all three. It’s throbbing, squeezing, beating like a living heart. Or maybe it’s pulsing like a star about to go supernova, because it’s got a gravitational pull all its own—pulling them together, pulling Shane’s hand down to Ryan’s cock.

Ryan wonders, abstractly, almost outside himself, if they’re going to crash back down to the table when they come. It doesn’t seem very important, in the grand scheme of things.

The whole world collapses down around the place where their bodies join, the warm pressure building there. They’re synchronized now, in action, in sensation. Shane’s hand is flying fast over Ryan’s cock, matching the sensations Ryan’s creating for him, inside himself. Ryan’s cock twitches, fills, thickens, and so does Shane’s, and Ryan _groans_ because he truly did not have another millimeter inside himself to spare.

It doesn’t matter. That warmth is still building, still pulsing, so sharp and electric that Ryan can almost taste it on his tongue. They’re at the top of the roller coaster, now, and they’re about to go over, together.

Ryan pelvis tightens, tighter, _tighter_ , shaking—and when he goes taut, it feels like he’s caught the lightning again.

Ryan comes.

He has a small out-of-body experience.

It’s like he’s above the ring of fire, above both of them, looking down at their bodies hovering in mid-air. Ryan sees his own balls draw up as his orgasm begins, and at exactly the same instant, he sees Shane start to shake apart beneath him. Ryan watches as his own cock pulses over and over in Shane’s fist, as his come shoots across Shane’s belly, as Shane rocks and grinds his own release out inside of him.

Ryan returns to his own body just in time to feel Shane’s cock throbbing rhythmically inside him, filling him with quite a different kind of warmth than the binding between them. Ryan watches, from this new vantage point, as his own cock paints a few more streaks of white across Shane’s chest.

There’s fire and air in the floating, flaming ring; there’s water and storm in the bond. The earth of the desert is all around them, and far below.

Their bodies still.

He doesn’t know whose magic it is—his, Shane’s, or something helpful and residual from the bar itself—but something lowers them slowly back to the pool table, as the ring of fire flickers out and disappears. Gingerly, Ryan pulls himself off of Shane’s cock, wincing a little as his legs shake. He feels raw and wet and open, and not just in a sexual way.

There are tears on his cheeks. He feels exposed. Outside of Shane's head now, he feels so far from the image of himself in Shane's mind, so far from the powerful being made of sex and magic that he saw reflected through Shane's eyes. He feels small.

Shane wraps himself around him.

“I peeked in your windows, little witch,” Shane says softly, right into Ryan’s ear. “Your shutters were open, so I looked inside. I liked what I saw. I wanted to take it for myself.”

“Got more than you bargained for though, huh,” Ryan tries to shoot back, but it comes out as barely a whisper. He’s so out of breath, so exhausted, and he can’t keep himself from pressing his lips to Shane’s shoulder, just to feel the binding energy that still fizzes every place they touch.

“Much more,” Shane agrees. “Much better.”

They lay, quiet, Shane still wrapped around him, Ryan's head pressed to Shane's chest. Shane's arms are wrapped around him, and just for a minute, Ryan allows himself to be held.

Then Shane snaps his fingers.

Their clothes reappear on their bodies, clean and unrumpled like they’re fresh out of the wash. The semen that was drying on their bellies, that was dripping down Ryan’s legs, is suddenly gone, wiped clean.

“That’s handy,” Ryan whispers.

The binding energy is a little weaker, now that they’re both clothed, now that they’re no longer skin-on-skin. But Ryan can still feel it, as sure and as certain as the energy of the desert around him.

“Guess you’re going to have to keep me around,” Shane says.

Ryan pushes himself up on his elbows, looks Shane in the eyes. They’ve been honest with each other, but this is a question that calls for more than honesty.

“You’d let yourself stay bound?” Ryan asks, voice low and serious. “You’re not gonna run down to the main office and…I don’t know.” The possibilities are truly endless, and horrifying—Shane’s certainly got enough friends in low places to wipe Ryan off the map if he wanted.

“You’re not gonna tell daddy Lucifer on me, or like…send a demonic legion after my ass?”

Shane smiles, and suddenly Ryan already knows his answer.

“Nah. Truth be told, the guys at the home office aren’t nearly as much fun as you are. An as for your ass, well—I’ve only just acquired it for myself. I’m hardly going to share it with a whole _legion_.”

Ryan grins.

“I think you’re a bit confused about who’s the acquire- _er_ and who’s the acquire- _ee_ in this relationship,” he says, then tugs the binding so that Shane has to touch his face.

Shane runs his thumb over Ryan’s temple like he doesn’t mind one bit.

“Don’t get used to this though,” Shane says, though he’s still stroking Ryan’s face, now of his own volition. “Once I’m out of touching distance, the binding won’t be strong enough to pull me around anymore. But you can still…” Shane trails off a bit, looking hesitant…embarrassed maybe? Or just like he’s afraid he’s saying too much.

“You can still use the binding to call on me.”

And then Shane-called-Shan-called-Shax, Great Marquis of Hell—he honest-to-God _blushes_ , and Ryan’s heart flutters a little.

“ _Aww_ ,” Ryan coos. “My own little demonic hotline for booty calls.”

“Well, you know.” Shane shifts a little on the table, clearly ill at ease with all this _nice_ but too caught up in the post-coital glow to stop himself. “Booty calls, washed up Sumerian goddesses you need to bounce, belligerent patrons in need of a good soul-eating. Whatever you need.”

Shane’s tone is casual, but Ryan’s been in his mind long enough to know he’s hiding something more.

_I want to give you whatever you need, Ryan._

“That reminds me,” Shane says. “I want to give you something.”

Shane fishes around in his pants pocket for a long moment, and Ryan almost doesn’t want to know what he could’ve summoned back from the ether with their clothes. For all he knows, his own pants have spent the last hour in the ninth circle of hell.

But what Shane fishes out of his pocket isn’t an eldritch horror after all. It’s nothing more than the black tourmaline necklace took off of Inanna’s unconscious body, a few hours ago.

“You should wear this, Ryan,” Shane says, and his tone is serious now. “Nastier neighbors than me are looking in your windows.”

Ryan lets Shane hang the pendant around his neck.

Work at the bar is never done, really. One demon barely defeated and already he’s got his next project—seal the bar's spiritual shutters closed with the energy of the black tourmaline. But that’s a job for after Shane’s gone.

And also, maybe, after a nap.

Shane sits up, groaning, and pushes himself off the pool table. The ring of fire’s finally flickered out, and Shane can finally leave the circle. He can finally walk outside.

Ryan follows him out the door.

Dawn in the Mojave is pink and gold. It shades the sand in orange, and casts the scrub bushes and the Joshua trees in shadow.

“Bye Ryan,” Shane says. “Be seeing you.”

“Bye, _Shane-called-Shax-called-Shan_ ,” Ryan says. “You will.”

Shane smiles.

Then he turns and walks to Inanna’s red Mercedes, snaps his right hand to unlock the door, snaps his left hand to turn the car’s ignition. And Ryan watches Shane drive off across the sand-and-gravel road. Ryan watches Shane veer right at the Joshua tree.

Ryan wraps a hand around the black crystal pendant at his neck. Holding it, Ryan watches, as Shane finally disappears.

*

Shane drives Inanna’s red Mercedes back onto I-40, drives past the old Route 66 attractions. He remembers them new, bright and space-age shiny, and it feels like _yesterday_ , but now they’re crumbling to dust.

California’s like that. She moves on fast.

Shane feels something _pull_ as he turns from I-40 onto I-15. It’s not a pull backwards, not a pull forwards—just a pull. Shane feels it again when he stops in Barstow, when he remembers the time before the concrete teepees of Route 66, before the gold rush miners, when the Paiute used to live here. He doesn’t stop in Barstow long.

He drives on, still feeling it, that strange _something_ fluttering in his chest—feels it as he drives through the Angeles national forest, where the poisonous lavender forget-me-nots are still blooming after the wildfires. He drives and drives, until he hits the 101, the traffic gridlock, the return of civilization.

That strange something is still there when he pulls back into the driveway of his apartment complex in LA.

Yeah, he lives in LA. You would too, if the alternative was hell.

He walks up his staircase, flicks on his AC, collapses down on his couch. And something—no not _something_ , the _pull_ , the energy, the flutter in his chest—something makes him reach into his pocket, looking for a pendant that’s no longer there.

But Shane feels the pendant like a phantom limb.

The cool smoothness of the black tourmaline against his hand.

The cold flash of Ryan’s black eyes in his mind’s eye.

Because that _something_ in his chest, of course, is Ryan. Ryan’s energy. The tiniest pinch of Ryan’s soul. The binding that connects the two of them, that Shane’s kept between the two of them, that he _will_ keep, as long as Ryan will allow it.

The energy in their bond is chaos and electricity and storm. The energy binding them reaches out of Los Angeles, across 200 miles of highway and ghost town and desert, into a bar in the Mojave desert, where a witch with strong arms and a big white smile is doing things with magic that Shane’s never seen before, not in two thousand years of long, long life.

And Shane knows, with the certainty of someone who’s lived that long, with the certainty of the memory of that witch’s power, with the comforting certainty of the bond he feels filling up his chest—that their energy, their bond, will draw him back across the desert.

That energy, that bond—it will draw him back to Ryan’s bar.

*

**Author's Note:**

> GOD I feel like this fic needs a works cited which is probably extremely pretentious of me but??? I ain’t no plagiarizer so here goes. This [AMAZING DEMON SHANE PLAYLIST](https://sequencefairy.tumblr.com/post/190716739143/maybe-ill-devour-your-soul-or-something-a) by sequencefairy probably contributed more to the Shane characterization in this fic that I’ll ever appreciate, as I listened to it on repeat for basically the last two weeks straight. 
> 
> This fic is dedicated to Jeff Goldblum, who broke through a week and ten thousand discarded words of writers block, and is therefore the only person mentioned in the text who is allowed to read it, if he wants. Who am I to tell Jeff Goldblum how to spend his time. 
> 
> American Gods by Neil Gaiman was the inspiration for having a washed up Sumerian Goddess show up in my fucking BFU fic, and also for a lot of the general vibes. I stole the binding spell verbatim from the Vampire Diaries wiki, so please address all bad Latin complaints to them.
> 
> For the chaos magic and probability spells, I was thinking a la Billy from Young Avengers being a reality warper, or if Domino from Deadpool manipulated probability using a thunderstorm as a battery. Everything else is extensive use of Wikipedia, Youtube “how to play pool” vids, and for the introduction, AtlasObscura/Google Maps.
> 
> Thanks to everyone so much for sticking with this, and for the kind and encouraging comments. I LOVE THESE DUMB HORNY BOYS (haha literally) SO MUCH.
> 
> Say hi [on tumblr (ar-os-tin-ee)](https://ar-os-tin-ee.tumblr.com)


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